Boo Ritson studied sculpture at the Royal College of Art, but she was always strangely drawn to paint. So when the UK artist was struggling to come up with something new for a group show, she decided that it was a good idea to just paint herself. Then Ritson asked her husband to take a photograph of the result. And thus her strange, medium-straddling career was born.
Ritson tends to paint people who she already knows, and likes to reuse the same models because it allows her to become more and more familiar with their bone structure. “I think about the topography of the face and how that might impact on the painting, either as an awkwardness, as a unifying thing, or as a mixture of both and take it from there,” she has explained of her process. “When I’ve finished painting the person, the work sits in space, image on object, and it has the clarity of definition you would expect from an object in space. At the point that the documentation starts, I then continue to work on the painting for a short time while referring to the image on [my computer] screen.” The resulting portraits — which feature characters inspired by American culture — are like nothing you’ve ever seen before. Click through to check out a selection of her work.
Image credit: Boo Ritson
Image credit: Boo Ritson
Image credit: Boo Ritson
Image credit: Boo Ritson
Image credit: Boo Ritson
Image credit: Boo Ritson
Image credit: Boo Ritson
Image credit: Boo Ritson
Image credit: Boo Ritson
Image credit: Boo Ritson