I have been trying to work on a series of art featuring this character in various scenarios working with the ‘ideas’ taken from an old 1958 photo shoot in Jamaica, and exploring “what might a modern young woman of strength, look like, using the vibes of those older moments and modernising them, finding a good ‘stance’ for her etc …”

so playing with things … and in this case the girl in the white man’s work shirt; think Bond women at breakfast circa 1962 …

and it works well because in the modern space we have adverts for the ‘boyfriend shirt’ and we have fashion items like the ‘Bailey and Budd’ Frank shirt; this idea of a ‘men’s work shirt’ for women’s casual wear …

in earlier versions of the character she’s holding a beer, because of a conscious choice about the moment she was inhabiting, but in this one I put a mobile phone to her hand, because I’m thinking of her up in the morning checking her emails, messages and social streams and as another iteration of the modernization of her

and then I started thinking of putting her in other situations, other settings …

she seemed almost like sort of a superhero’s alter ego, to me … like she had some sort of other life; and so in this case she’s riding in a Morgan Plus 8 …

‘coo yah’ is a jamaican/caribbean patois exclamation that means ‘(would you) look at that!’

cool things

ideas, man …