Stella Vine

from Audio Arts Magazine Volume 22 Numbers 2 & 3, 2004

Transcript

Stella Vine talked to Jean Wainwright at the Saatchi Gallery during the exhibition New Blood. Vine’s fascination with Princess Diana as victim, tabloid celebrity and superstar – the relationship of Diana and her butler as a subject for her painting is highlighted with regard to the tabloid fascination with tragedy and conspiracy theories. Hi Paul I’m Scared (2003) is contrasted with Rachel Whiter’s portrait and the press controversy that it caused as calls were being made for Rachel’s body to be exhumed. Vine’s method of painting with its distinctive ‘bad painting’ characteristics and her inclusion in Saatchi’s new hang are also included in the vox pop interview by Jean Wainwright in 2004.

Jean Wainwright: I’m here with Stella Vine at the Saatchi Gallery just before the opening of the exhibition New Blood. Stella can I talk to you first of all about the subject matter of the two paintings and what made you want to do those works?

Stella Vine: As far as these two go the Diana one came a little bit before the Rachel one. I think I did Diana in October; it was when all the press had come out about the Paul Burrell letter and everything and I painted that one stemming from that. I did about thirty paintings based on the crash. I did MI5, Paul Burrell, the Queen, the Queen Mum, aliens, Masons, and I got really involved in all that. I was an admirer of Diana’s; I liked the many facets of her, the vulnerable woman who wanted to be loved by everyone and the more scheming side, trying to get by and make the best of situations.

JW: What about the actual way you’ve used paint, I would just like you to talk about the impact of the surface qualities of that work?

SV: I was imagining getting inside her head and heightening that reality to an extreme with her being in her princess gear and her princess hat because she wanted to be a princess still and, ‘queen of hearts’, and yet there’s a thing about the future, the car crash and everything.

JW: Also the writing; the feelings that you got?

SV: I can’t quite remember that thought process for the actual writing.

JW: It’s interesting because the two paintings here refer back to happier times and yet also forward to demise. The other one of Rachel Whiter is like a photograph of her in happier times and then, by the colour and the smudged lipstick, you’re showing just another aspect of her, obviously death by heroin.

SV: Yes, when I first saw that image of Rachel, keeled over dead with the syringe in her hand, I remember thinking it was quite horrifying and disturbing but it was also very brave; a brave thing for the parents to do. I kept drawing it and putting it in paintings, snow scenes without actually realising why. It was only recently that I realised that that’s what I’d been doing because I started remembering all these bent over females. I wanted to paint that; I wanted to kind of fix it for Rachel so that she would be in some better place, like a beautiful forest or an Alice in Wonderland thing or a sort of heavenly type thing. There was going to be a fox in it, so there would be a hint of menace. That image struck me very strongly as being about all the lost females and the thousands of girls up and down the country who are in awful situations at this second. Illegal immigrants who are stuffed full of crack and heroin in order to be pimped and prostituted in order to pay their way. Just like the Soham girls and Milly Dowler; I think I’d be absolutely terrified if I had a daughter. I have a son who is eighteen and that’s been frightening enough. It was like Rachel’s voice the way the lips have bled, be it blood, paint or whatever. It’s what’s inside and what’s to come; a voice for those sorts of images that were conjured up because of that very powerful iconic image. It touched me quite deeply and it’s just my little contribution, my little voice for Rachel. A bit sad that people have found it so shocking.

JW: Can we just talk about this whole phenomenon and the press furore and the Saatchi phenomenon?

SV: People think that it’s gratuitous and sensationalist, jumping on the band wagon, trying to make a buck and then they throw in that the stripper stuff as well as, ‘she’s not been to art school’. About that whole stripping ‘hostessing’ kind of world where you’re considered a bit of a liar a thief and a fake. Yeah, people must be quite suspicious that you are just ‘up for something’ and then they’re also very suspicious of Saatchi. I’m not up to any of that and I don’t think Saatchi is either. When I look around I feel quite at home. He’s put me next to Paula Rego, which is really bizarre because I’ve been thinking about her all weekend. I remember seeing her work in the eighties and all those fairy stories and drawing that are in my work at the drama school.

JW: We’ve got Grayson Perry here, Paula Rego and you.

SV: It’s really an amazing little corner.