ARTIST PROFILE

About Art by Fiona Duffy

Dissociation, depersonalizations, detachment: clinical terms for disrupted perceptions of self. Chronic emotional turmoil is manifested physiologically through fatigue, pain, and illness- all of which exacerbate the disconnect between the body and psyche.   Drawing on lived experience with chronic illness, Duffy's figurative paintings are preoccupied with the psychological states of the fallible body, and the broader human condition of abject experience. Working in diluted layers of oil paint on mylar, these self-portraits explore the body as a permeable container for the self, vulnerable to threats internal and external. As bodily borders are transgressed and collapse, these paintings embody the emotional experience of living in a body that fails.