The Invisible Women Who Inspired My Contemporary Narrative Paintings

Hidden Lives, Humour and the Psychology of Working-Class Women in Art

As a contemporary British artist, I often find myself drawn to the hidden psychology of ordinary people — particularly older women whose lives, humour and resilience are so often overlooked.

I grew up surrounded by women who rarely spoke directly about themselves.

Not properly.

Certainly not about menopause, loneliness, disappointment, mental health or fear. Those things were either disguised as humour, whispered in kitchens, or dismissed with a brisk:

“You just got on with it.”

My mum still insists Davina McCall practically invented menopause.

In her generation, women didn’t “make a fuss.” They had their pipes whipped out at forty, booked a fortnight in Benidorm and quietly battled on.

Private matters stayed private.
Especially in front of men.

And yet these same women were often hilarious, rebellious, psychologically sharp and completely unpredictable.

Their inner worlds leaked out elsewhere:
in bingo halls,
at family parties,
on bus journeys,
through cutting one-liners,
or simply in the rheumy-eyed twinkle of a woman dragging a shopping trolley through town with decades of untold stories sitting quietly behind her eyes.

Those are the women who appear time and again in my contemporary narrative paintings.

Much of my work explores the emotional complexity hidden inside working-class British life — the humour, restraint, awkwardness and unspoken tensions beneath everyday social rituals.

My fascination with human behaviour probably began early.

Both my maternal grandparents were psychiatric nurses and my Grandad taught me how to read body language, facial expressions and, more importantly, what people weren’t saying.

It made me an odd child really.

Always staring.
Watching.
Absorbing tensions.
Trying to weigh people up.

I became fascinated by awkward silences, hidden motives, family dynamics and the strange reality of ordinary life — all the things most children probably wandered straight past.

I wish I’d kept my primary school English essays.

I can still remember teachers raising their eyebrows and saying:

“Well… you do have a furtive imagination.”

I suspect I could have given Tales of the Unexpected a run for its money.

Looking back now, I realise that’s exactly why I paint the awkward moments, the forgotten women and the not-so-shiny realities of British life.

As a British narrative artist, I’m not interested in polished nostalgia or sentimental versions of the past.

I’m interested in what sits underneath it:
the tension,
the humour,
the sadness,
the performance,
the resilience,
and the tiny acts of rebellion hidden inside ordinary lives.

One painting I recently rediscovered in an old portfolio was Hats and Bags.

It’s a contemporary figurative painting I created years ago, long before I fully understood why I was so drawn to these scenes, but now it feels like a baton I want to pick up again and run with.

The painting captures a group photo at a 1970s wedding or family “do” — the sort where nobody actually said what they meant, but entire emotional battles were fought through handbags, hats, seating plans and facial expressions.

Women smiling through gritted teeth.
Carefully measured politeness.
Class anxieties wrapped in faux fur.
Old rivalries simmering beneath sherry and sausage rolls.

As a child, I found these gatherings fascinating and slightly terrifying.

Everyone seemed to be performing versions of themselves.

You could sense the hierarchy immediately:
who was “doing well,”
who was putting on airs,
who had married above themselves,
who was quietly judging everyone else.

Nothing was openly discussed, yet somehow everything was understood.

Looking back, I realise those rooms taught me as much about human psychology as any art school ever did.

That fascination with behaviour, silence and social performance continues to shape my contemporary paintings of older women and working-class British culture today.

And perhaps that’s why I keep returning to these women in my work.

Not because they are quaint or comic relics of the past —
but because beneath the humour sits something deeply human:
the things we suppress,
the roles we perform,
the secrets we carry,
and the truths that leak out anyway.

I think I’ve spent my whole life quietly observing people.

And painting has become my way of telling the stories nobody quite said out loud.