Joe Hesketh is a female painter living and working in Pendle, Lancashire, UK, her large scale abstract paintings interpret life as a woman in 21st century Britain, dealing with issues such as class, race and equality, also ignorance in this over saturated world.Her ominous portraits veer between sex, death and life, humour and tragedy, resulting in a disconcerting and yet entirely unique visual duality. Themes of transgression and the grotesque pervade her work.
Her work is about being human, even about our parasitic race – just existing in a sexist, racist and narcissistic world. A desire to see and find meaning in chaotic conditions with the instinct to do justice to a full range of feelings and self-conceptions. Are we a spiralling population running out of room, in a place that is doomed to eat itself alive?
“I Feel like the work I want to make is an uneasy feeling inside but it is useful, it makes us know we are alive. We all exist on this Earth, we all bounce around it. With the use of bright colours, my work can be a warning, a red flag, everything you don’t want it to be, a spasm or a little slapstick, or a slap in the face .”
