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My work explores our complex and often fraught relationship with food. I am specifically interested in the power and mythology of meat, how it represents men as powerful (hunters, carvers, grillers etc..), women as weak (e.g. in our language- chick, (fat) cow, (old) crow etc..). I am drawn to 17th century Dutch still life and use these paintings as inspiration to explore tensions between representations of power and weakness as well as between culture and nature. In Still Life with Hares and Cartouche I have used the image of dead hares and contrasted them with a cartouche (a framing of an image with flowers or fruit that was primarily decorative). I used black, white and grey to equalize and unify the image. Black and white are also neutral and can feel lifeless. They allow us to look at a picture’s shapes, textures and subject matter in an uncluttered way.

Rachel Major

rachelsmajor@gmail.com