Sarah Lightman – “Biblical Women Ageing Disgracefully”
“Biblical Women Ageing Disgracefully,” paintings by Sarah Lightman, is showing in the UK at Chester Visual Arts in July. Lightman explains that these are “…paintings…of familiar figures, once painted by ‘masters’ of Western art, and trapped in scenes from my own life: Bathsheba is tired of the dishes; Eve’s lost in the pile of laundry; Mary struggles with parenting and experiences an unexpected perimenopausal bleed on holiday. In this exhibition of carefully observed watercolour paintings, I plait religion, humour, and satire to spotlight women’s lives, struggles, and ageing bodies.”
Featured Paintings
Captions by the artist. The historical paintings referenced are linked below each of Lightman’s works.
Bathsheba’s Paths Untaken
After Bathsheba Reading David’s Letter (1654) Rembrandt
Watercolour on Paper (2024)
Even the King’s sexy plaything cannot escape the ravages of time, the desperation of endless household tasks and the painful agonies of “what ifs”.
John for Dinner
After Judith (or Salome?) (1510) Sebastiano del Piombo
Watercolour on Paper (2022)
Biblical Domestic Series
Salome, unquestionably North West London’s hostess with the mostess, was eager to impress her fancy new neighbours, so she spent an entire day cooking John the Baptist. How was she to know they were vegetarian? Please note it is not absolutely necessary to have a double oven for this recipe, but it does help.
Woman Wading in a Stream of Stir Fry
After Bathsheba at Her Bath (1654) Rembrandt
Watercolour on Paper (2021)
Biblical Domestic Series
No sooner does she escape Rembrandt’s murky waters, Bathsheba finds herself stuck in puddles of last night’s stir fry as someone, once again, forgot to switch on the dishwasher.
Madonna of the Soft Play – A Prayer for the Lost and Found
After Virgin and Child Adored by Two Angels (1505) Andrea Prevatali
Watercolour on Paper (2022)
Biblical Domestic Series
Mary wonders if she needs to dig deep into the ball pit for Jesus’s missing nappy, or should she leave it as surprise lucky dip for the next visitor? More pressingly, where did he pick up those cherries he was enjoying so much, and are they even edible?
Just Ten Minutes Peace
After Susanna and the Elders (1610) Artemisia Gentileschi
Watercolour on Paper (2022)
Biblical Domestic Series
Susanna begs her family for ten minutes, just ten minutes, of uninterrupted solitude, so she can have her bath in peace and tranquility.
The Uniform List Blues and Greys
After The Soldier’s Wife (1878) George Smith
Watercolour on Paper (2022)
Biblical Domestic Series
As September approaches she is struck by a deep overwhelming malaise as she opens the dreaded email from the school secretary with the full list of uniform requirements for the upcoming academic year. And then, before she knows it, term is about to start, and she realises that everywhere is sold out of knee high socks in the right size.
Fridge Frustrations
After Judith Beheading Holofernes (1599)Caravaggio
Watercolour on Paper (2022)
Biblical Domestic Series
Judith can’t find anywhere in the fridge for her organic and fresh cut of Holofernes. Once again, her eyes were bigger than her storage space. When will she learn not to lose her head over all those delicious special offers ?
The Annunciation of Menopause
After The Annunciation (1440-1445) Fra Angelico
Watercolour on paper
Menstrual Hystery Series
SARAH LIGHTMAN is an artist and writer. She completed an Art Foundation course at Central/St. Martins, attended The Slade School of Art for her BA and MFA and has a PhD from University of Glasgow in women’s autobiographical comics. She was an Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. She is Faculty at The Royal Drawing School, London. She is author of her graphic memoir, The Book of Sarah, co-edited Jewish Women in Comics: Bodies and Borders, and edited Graphic Details: Jewish Women’s Confessional Comics in Essays and Interviews. She is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including a Will Eisner Award, The Susan Koppelman Prize, a Jordan Schnitzer Book Award, a South Atlantic Modern Languages Association Book Award, two Hadassah Brandeis Institute Research Awards, The Principal’s Early Career Mobility Fund (University of Glasgow), The Slade Duveen Travel Award, The Slade Life Drawing Prize, UCL, The Slade Prize, UCL, The Coldstream Sessional Prize for Excellence, UCL, UCL Travel Grant, The Rothschild Foundation, The David Foundation, European Association for Jewish Culture, and The Arts Humanities and Research Council. For more information please visit www.sarahlightman.com
Excerpts from the Catalogue Essay by Dr. Dawn Llewellyn
“…(T)he women in Sarah Lightman’s vivid paintings are both familiar and unfamiliar. While it might take a moment to place their names immediately, they are women who feature in religious texts, historical accounts, and the canon of Western art. At the same time, although these women have been central to the stories that have shaped our social world and have inspired religious teachings and doctrines, it is rare to see them presented fully, on their own terms. Too often, even these most famous of women are given only a secondary or partial role, or if they are depicted, they are usually idealised in impossible ways: scapegoated, brutalised, or sidelined as the object and instrument that serves the “malestream” narrative….
This is, of course, not the whole story. These are versions of women’s lives that have been told and retold through the “male gaze”, androcentric readings that centre men’s but neglect women’s authority, knowledge, understanding, relationship to the divine, their bodies and feelings. In “Biblical Women Ageing Disgracefully”, Sarah Lightman offers a playful feminist corrective. She reimagines these women, once painted by the great “masters”, places them in scenes from her life, and gives them her mid-life body. In a witty recognition of female aging and the gendered, mundane relentlessness of domestic chores and tasks, Eve, Mary, Judith and their sisters in this series share their realities that are usually silenced and devalued by patriarchal, religious ideologies…
Sarah’s work is also a reminder that although it may appear that religions are fixed and stable phenomena based on given certainties and absolutes, its texts, practices, doctrines, and teachings emerge through ongoing processes that are dependent on particular historical factors….”
DR DAWN LLEWELLYN is Associate Professor of Religion and Gender at the University of Chester. She draws on feminist qualitative approaches to examine gender and feminism in contemporary Christianity and new spiritualities. She is the author of Reading, Feminism, and Spirituality: Troubling the Waves, and has co-edited Reading Spiritualities (with Deborah F. Sawyer), Religion, Equalities and Inequalities (with Sonya Sharma), Female Faith Practices (with Nicola Slee, Kim Wasey, and Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz). In addition, with Sian Hawthorne and Sonya Sharma, she edits Bloomsbury’s series in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality and they recently published The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion, Gender, and Sexuality. Dawn is currently completing her latest book, Narratives of Choice: Motherhood and Voluntary Childlessness in Christianity, which explores Christian women’s reproductive agency.