Lorna May Wadsworth is a young female artist based in East London. The overriding theme of her work is the human figure, and expressing her perceptions and experiences of the human form in charcoal and oil paint. Wadsworth sees her work as a dialogue with artists that inspire her - from Caravaggio to Rembrandt, Auerbach to de Kooning - and she paints from life using large sensuous brush strokes capturing light on form.

Wadsworth continues the traditions of her forefathers, but through the prism of the female gaze. Inverting the art historical paradigm of omnipotent male creator and passive female muse, Wadsworth brazenly turns the canon of Western art on its head. She joyously celebrates and extols male beauty, seeking out models “so beautiful they make [her] want to weep”, approaching them where ever she might find them, and instigating an encounter which her paintings then capture: two people in the same space and time, both with their will bent towards producing a work of art.

Lorna has persuaded a formidable collection of high profile sitters to collaborate with her in making a portrait, always preferring to work un-commissioned so her work is not mediated by a commissioning body, gleaning access to individuals on her own initiative. One such picture is her portrait of Rt Hon Baroness Thatcher, an indomitable 6 foot square canvas, painted from five sittings with Lady Thatcher at her home. She explains “I wanted to paint the picture of her that no one would commission - of the Iron Lady of my childhood”.