Aleah Chapin: interview

American artist Aleah Chapin has had huge success early in her career. On graduating from the New York Academy of Art she was made a postgraduate fellow and went on to become one of the youngest artists to win the BP portrait award in 2012.

Chapin’s on-going Aunties series playfully presents the older female body, challenging traditional depictions of the female nude. She knows her models well and they know each other, bringing both intimacy and insight to her paintings.

Her latest exhibition entitled Maiden, Mother, Child & Crone explores each stage of a woman’s life and the relationships between generations, placing an emphasis on neo-paganism and a connectedness with nature. The largest work on display in this exhibition, entitled It Was the Sound of Their Feet, is a compositionally complex piece celebrating the mature body. The women in this painting play a game, forming a tunnel with their legs, through which each will crawl. Although advanced in years they play with the joyful abandon of youth. Age, Chapin shows us, is a state of mind.

Maiden, Mother, Child & Crone
Flowers Gallery, Cork Street, London
8 October – 8 November 2014

Interview by EMILY SPICER
Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY