The Empowering Imagery of Lisa Brice’s Paintings

In her work as a figurative painter, South African-born and London-based artist Lisa Brice seeks to challenge the traditional depiction of women in Western art history. Through her signature use of cobalt blue, Brice reclaims the female nude from the male gaze, which has long sought to oppress women as passive objects of desire. In her portraits, whether in a solo or group setting, women are freed from the limited roles of model and muse. They proudly wield paintbrushes, capturing their own likeness and that of their comrades, or lounge against doors and mirrors while smoking cigarettes, effectively dismantling the hierarchical relationship between the artist and the subject. No longer are these women mere objects for the spectator’s gaze – their direct or seemingly unaware stares represent empowered individuals driven by their own desires.

The characters and settings depicted in Brice’s paintings are formed from a diverse mix of images sourced from magazines, the internet, personal photographs, and, most importantly, art history itself. As she puts it, “all painting is a lineage – it’s all a conversation with what’s come before.” References to well-known works by male European painters such as Degas, Manet, Picasso, and Vallotton can be found in her interior scenes. However, Brice also makes a point to draw upon a lineage of female painters who have been largely overlooked in traditional Western art history. For example, American Abstract Expressionist Helen Frankenthaler is depicted pouring cobalt blue paint onto a canvas, Dutch painter Charley Toorop and Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama appear fused together in a self-portrait, and Gertrude Stein (as painted by Picasso in 1905-6) is placed next to Vallotton’s seated figure from The White and the Black (1913), sparking a dialogue between female cultural figures from different generations. 

In her early years, Brice served as a printmaking assistant for South African artist Sue Williamson, igniting her fascination for repetition and her characters. One such character is a hissing black cat borrowed from Manet’s Olympia (1863), which reappears throughout her collection as she creates – in her own words – “a small army of feminine figures.”

The striking cobalt blue, squeezed straight from the tube, dominates Brice’s color scheme and carries significant meaning within her work. Initially used to capture the blue light of a neon sign and the atmospheric hue of twilight, it has evolved into a nod to the Trinidadian “blue devil.” This is a character from Carnival, embodied by masqueraders who cover their bodies in blue (or tinted) paint. This “blue devil” is traditionally crafted using Reckitt’s Blue powder – a substance historically used throughout the British Empire for whitening whites, repurposed in this context for skin bleaching. For Brice, this cultural practice and its inclusion in her art serves as a means of “concealing natural skin tones and challenging a simplistic or preconceived interpretation of the subject based on ethnicity.”

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