Eva Yates (born 1996 Southeast London) currently completing her Painting MA at the Royal Collage Of Art. Yates is a surrealist oil painter whose warping of imagery counters her demons. Always gravitating towards myth and legend, as can be seen in her earlier paintings ‘Ophelia’ 2020 and ‘Narcissus’ 2021 and 2022 Venice series of futuristic nymphs. Also exploring the circles and spheres that have been used in art as vessels of perfection throughout history, not least in such as ‘Vitruvian Man’ (Leonardo da Vinci 1490) and ‘The Ancient of Days’ (William Blake 1794).
The bubbles in her paintings are an organic, veined, a projection of the occupant’s own self. Exploring the mind, disorder and mental health, and issues that spring from this, playing with ideas of the subconscious, death, life, sleep and stress, loneliness and companionship. The sphere represents feelings of isolation, but also paradoxically how the wish for a protective bubble to keep intrusive thoughts at bay. Making a coded language through the use of symbols to represent her experience with hypochondria. Eva expresses her fear with the interior life spilling into the exterior. The body of work becomes a diary process of her dealing with those fears and phobias allowing for a cathartic experience.
The experience of exterior pressures caving is represented with the use of a concrete like matter set on the canvas. The phrase ‘the cracks are beginning to show’ comes to mind. Repeating through her work are painted veins indeed appearing as cracks, letting intrusive thoughts seep in through her protective shield. Contrastingly, her insanity is beginning to seep out.
Using her friends as muse, she immortalises the iconic and reinvigorates the nostalgic.
Eva recently completed her studies in classic realism at Grand Central Atelier in New York, studying under Jacob Collins and Colleen Barry.
