The Ambassadors

2025

Hills Art Centre, Sunderland, UK

The Ambassadors

1500 x 1800 x 50mm
Oil painting on canvas, polymer clay sculptures, metal hooks, clout nails.

Commissioned by Pink Collar Gallery.

The Ambassadors is a self-portrait of the artist surrounded by their queer community of friends, acting as a survey of queer life and a snapshot of their ever evolving identities and bodies.

The work takes inspiration from Hans Holbein the Younger's painting of the same title, both with its proud composition and textural richness. The painting is set within the bedroom of the artist where friends slouch around a familiar setting, watching over one another protectively, staring back at the viewer challengingly and with derision.

The background and foreground become indistinct with overwhelming pattern, and motifs of the artist's personal life and artistic practice are scattered throughout the painting, taking sculptural form to expand the image out of the confines of the stretcher.