Natasha Michaels – Escape (Apollo and Daphne Series)

In Natasha Michaels’ monotypes the gestural movement, the drag and smear of the ink prevent a simple transcription of the original image. Messy brushwork, drips and pressure cause the image to blur and bleed into itself.

In the original of this engraving of Apollo and Daphne, the dark core of the myth is rendered palatable, even desirable by the precision and skill of its creator. We witness this ancient and unpleasant plot unfold again, somehow sanitised by the passage of time and the controlled hand of the artist. There have been centuries of aestheticising women being assaulted by divine power.

The surface of the image conveys the speed of pursuit and escape, Apollo is smudged away as Daphne becomes a tree .She has asked to be saved from him and is silenced in the process.

Natasha Michaels’ monoprints seem to arrive at the intersection of history and the present, casting a disorienting glance at the past, while fixing an uneasy, almost accusatory stare on the present. Drawing on the rich, formal language of Renaissance and 19th-century portraiture, Michaels works with a palpable ambivalence—both celebrating and upending these traditional forms. She wrestles the originals, twisting and contorting them until they are transformed into something else, something decidedly more uncertain. Her sitters, who once stood as icons of power and permanence, are rendered awkward, perplexed, even uncomfortable, as if unsure of their place in the world.

Michaels studied at the Royal College of Art (1994-96) and St Martins School of Art (1989-1992). She was recently shortlisted for the Boodle Hatfield Prize and recipient of the Ushaw Residency Award and exhibition. Other awards include the 2021 Jealous Gallery Prize. Her work is in the public collections of The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Pallant House Gallery, Chichester; Chippenham Museum and Holburne Museum, Bath.