Since Claerwen James abandoned a promising career as a molecular biologist in 1999 and went to the Slade School of Fine Art, she has painted exquisitely wrought pictures of small children, who seem lost in a wistful world of their own. She denies they are intentionally autobiographical, but they do resonate with the sadness she felt as a child: “To some extent I see myself in most of them; yes, something is resonating there.”
Claerwen, 44, has never painted her own nine-year-old daughter, Maia, even though her daughter has asked her to. “Maia would be a terrific subject,” she says “but I can’t bear the idea. My paintings are melancholy and I would be afraid of creating a portrait that took Maia’s joyousness. I can’t do that to her, and it is not the way I want to see her. It is what emerges in my pictures because I think what I am painting is how hard life is and disappointment inevitable. I didn’t like being a child much.”
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