blog post #24 - am i actually losing my shit?

🎧 why not listen to my dulcet tones? (but be warned it’s got a PG rating might be best with your headphones on, kween!)

or if the accent's too much you can always read it

either way it's still 100% kweenie

erm also before we get into it…

(i’m going to do a wee series of these posts, so just want to set the scene as it were)

you might be wondering why i keep coming back to these women

not influencers, not whoever the algorithm’s obsessed with this week

but them my black & white kweens

& the truth is, it didn’t actually start with hollywood

it started in my mum’s kitchen

back in the 80s, our kitchen doubled as my mum’s salon

rollers, hairspray clouds, ciggies & ashtrays, cups of coffee & opinions flying all over the shop

& me (youngest of 3 girls) hanging about, listening, watching & learning

not understanding it at the time but i was sitting in the middle of a matriarchy

these women weren’t talking about film stars, they were the main characters

glamorous without trying, resilient AF without announcing it, carrying whole lives on their backs, still showing up & with their lipstick intact

& when i look back now at the photos, the energy, the way they held themselves, they look like icons

like Audrey Hepburn, like Marilyn Monroe, like Elizabeth Taylor, like Nina Simone

but they weren’t trying to be them, they were just being themselves

‘cause that era of women?

they were forging something, quietly, without really having a language for it, without the spotlight

but you can feel it when you look back

the strength, the defiance

& somewhere along the way, that’s what stayed with me

so when these faces started appearing in my work it wasn’t random

it was recognition, not just of who they were, but of who i’d already seen

who i was raised by, who i come from

this series of posts?

it’s not about nostalgia tbh it’s really about legacy

about the women who came before us

the ones who didn’t have the words, the platforms, or the permission, but did it anyway

& every time i paint one of these kweens, i’m not just painting her

i’m painting all of them

including the ones who never made it onto a silver screen

ok so now on with the post

am i actually losing my shit?

so, audrey hepburn i’ve talked about her before, everybody knows her, right?

go on, picture her

i’ll wait…

in my head i’m thinking

little black dress. pearls. massive sunnies. cigarette holder. pastry outside tiffany’s at 6am

looking like someone who has genuinely never once had a bad thought, a bad day, or a bad anything in her entire life

yep that audrey

but do you know what, that audrey didn’t actually exist

what the world fell in love with was a performance. so polished, so completely convincing, that even the people closest to her couldn’t always see underneath it

& not “performance” as in fake but as in survival

as in: this is who they need me to be right now, so this is who i’ll be

‘cause the real audrey?

she wanted to be ballerina & nearly starved to death as a child

during the nazi occupation of holland, she was eating tulip bulbs to survive (& yep, i had to read that twice too!)

malnourished, sick, watching people she loved disappear

her dream of becoming a professional ballerina - gone, ‘cause her body was too broken from what the war had done to it

so she pivoted, reinvented, put on the dress & became the most elegant woman in the room

& nobody really knew

i’ve been thinking about audrey a LOT lately

not the tiffany’s one, the one underneath

‘cause that’s the bit i can’t stop seeing right now, not just in her

but everywhere

women being reduced to the surface, misread, kinda like smoothed over or slowly disappearing altogether

all this has inspired me to start a new collection (finally gave her a name - “she never left”)

& if i’m honest with you (& you know by now i always am, even when it’s mortifying AF)

i started it in a bit of a state (& that’s an understatement tbh)

perimenopause is a complete BASTARD

there, i said it

the brain fog alone? something else entirely, like trying to think through soggy fcking cotton wool

mid-sentence & i’ve completely lost the thread (much to the amusement of Pablo)

mid-painting & i’ve forgotten wtaf i was doing & then i start to sweat like an absolute mother trucker!

lying awake at 3am toes twitching & totally convinced my brain has packed a bag & done a moonlit fcking flit

the woman i used to be feels like she’s somewhere behind me & just getting wee’er & wee’er

& i straight up started to think

FUUUCK, have i lost IT or worse HER, has “SHE” gone?

& then along with that, i’m watching the world outside & i’m fcking RAGIN’

‘cause it’s not just hormones trying to erase us, kween

it’s everything

it’s the far right over here in the UK floating the idea of taxing women for not having kids (actually can’t believe i just typed that - TAXING. WOMEN. FOR. NOT. HAVING. KIDS - wtaf is this, 1450?!)

oh & lets not forget that they want to abolish the equalities act ffs!

& it’s the Handmaids Tale shit that’s going down in america right now where women’s rights are being dismantled so fast your head spins trying to keep TF up

it’s the whole boiling frog situation where they turn the heat up so gradually that by the time you notice, you’re already disappearing

& i thought - no

no

FUUUCK NO

i am not doing this quietly

that’s where “she never left” came from

"she never left, II"
kweenie original feminist pop art portrait featuring Audrey Hepburn 

faces you’ll recognise - half swallowed by clouds of colour, some almost completely consumed by them, some just barely peeking through

but all of them

still there

still fierce

still her

not gone

but clouded

‘cause here’s the difference between gone & clouded (& it matters waaay more than i can tell you btw)

gone means it’s over

clouded means she’s in there, behind the fog & clouds, waiting

& yeah the fog might be thick with fcking hormones right now

or grief, or burnout, or 33 goddam fcking years of being everything to everyone & slowly disappearing under the weight of it

or it might be the actual patriarchy doing its fcking best to make you believe you were never that powerful to start with

(spoiler: you were. you are. they know it. that’s why they’re so fcking threatened)

anyways, back to audrey

'cause here’s what most people don’t know

after the fame - after the oscars, after becoming the most photographed woman on the planet, after decades of being the world’s favourite icon of effortless perfection -

she just… stopped

walked away

settled in switzerland, grew vegetables, raised her kids, told the whole circus to do one

the world thought she’d disappeared

she hadn’t

she was just done performing for people who didn’t deserve the show

& then - quietly, no fanfare, in her late 50s - she went to ethiopia, somalia. bangladesh. sudan

walked into orphanages, held the children & fought for them

no performance required

just her

the woman who the world had decided was untouchable - literally on the ground in famine zones, covered in dust, fighting for children who had nothing

she never disappeared

she just finally got to be herself

& her best, most fully herself, most real years?

they were her last ones

she was 63 when she died

SIXTY THREE

& the thing that gets me every single time i think about it - she spent decades being who the world needed her to be & then one day just stopped & became who she actually was

& it was bigger, braver more real than anything that came before it

so here’s what i want to say to you kween

whether you’re perimenopausal & your brain is currently doing the fcking hokey cokey with your identity

whether you’re burnt out & can’t remember who TF you were before the responsibilities piled on like a fcking straight jacket you didn’t ask for

whether you’re just watching the news every day going “wtaf is happening” & feeling yourself shrink under the sheer weight of it all

she never left

she’s still in there, she might just be behind the clouds for a bit

your best years are not behind you

they’re just waiting for the clouds to shift

i don’t know about you, but i’m making damn sure they get TF out of my way

& as a way to help you move them i’ve got a wee gift for you, a visual reminder of who TF you are

come find her, you can claim her here

love you, bye

kx

PS what audrey hepburn (the real one, not the tiffany’s one) taught me:

1. the version of you the world sees is not always the version of you that exists - & the real one is pretty much always the more badass one
2. walking away from the performance isn’t disappearing - sometimes it’s the bravest thing you’ll ever do
3. they’ve always tried to erase us - tulip bulbs, tax penalties, slow-boiling legislation, the lot - & we’re still fcking here!
4. perimenopause sucks ass but us kweens are tough AF, so bring it on bish!

PPS had a crazy thought that i might launch my whole new collection live online via zoom, just so you can see my super gorge sweats IRL

let me know what you think & don't hold back, i can take it! (& i mean about the live launch not the sweats lol) x