About the Mise en scène paintings

In June 2023 I returned to two older series Cuts and Crocodile Tears, first created in 2015-16, to take the concept further. Mise en scène brings these new works together with other new series based on specific cinematic tropes that fascinate me.

I work with a single frame, which I extract from obsessively watching hundreds of hours of film and television, looking out for that one moment. My process degrades the source material, and I isolate the characters from the original narrative, shifting the context and simultaneously rendering the actor virtually anonymous. The audience does not need to know the character or story in order to read these paintings; each viewer brings their own narratives as the image becomes further removed from its original source and gains autonomy.

These paintings toy with context. I choose my image carefully, then crop, edit and reframe for a particular focus. I sometimes deliberately compose to reference the Baroque. Although the paintings themselves are mostly small, the scale within the picture plane is much greater than life-size, much like the cinema screen.

More related series are in progress.

Cut series

The Cut series takes a cut to the cheek as a cinematic cliché. The paintings parody the visual shorthand used to portray an injury within the confines of the stare of the lens. The circumstances surrounding each injury may vary, a cut from an accident, perhaps from a violent or a heroic act – the women in particular are usually strong characters – yet in reality this ‘cut’ is only an illusion created with make-up, merely a painted mark in itself.

These ‘cuts’ are also an unexpected imperfection to the painted surface, both referencing the brush stoke and highlighting the violence implicit in the mark.

Crocodile Tears series

The Crocodile tears paintings share a common human experience – an outpouring of emotion: crying. If we become absorbed in the film we might shed a tear ourselves. A fleeting tear rolling down the cheek is trapped and made static, sometimes blurred, separated from the original physical action of crying, and the action of moving film.

Composed to focus on the protagonist’s tears, and further isolated from the script and a stirring soundtrack, the cause of the tears becomes a mystery. On the one hand the paintings are unsentimental parody: after all, these are the artificial tears of an actor. On the other hand, removed from context, these paintings appear intense and emotionally charged. As empathetic beings we share the emotion without necessarily knowing why.

Cut lip series

The Cut lip series represents a very particular filmic trope: unlike the previous two series where the actor can be any gender, a woman portrayed with a cut lip is almost always suffering the aftermath of violence inflicted by a man. The dichotomy of a beautiful but bloodied mouth places the viewer in a spot, even before other allusions.

Natalie Dowse 2024

Further reading:

CBP Artist of the Month: July 2024

Artist to artist interview with Phil Illingworth