Gill Button is a painter based in London, UK. Her paintings draw from the constant stream of images that flash before us in the media. Gill’s muses are often fashion icons or fleeting glimpses of models which she then interprets with a fluid, gestural style. Echoes of recognition and subtle studies of patterns hint back to her source material, but there is something much more personal in Gill’s work. Appropriated images become invested with feelings; portraits of strong identities are tempered with the fragility of fame. Gill uses the public eye as a frame through which to channel emotional identification so that her works become less about the subject, and more a question of the emotional makeup of the image, and of how the viewer gives them meaning. Monochrome works reminiscent of old photos echo childhood trips, screen icons, or faces flashed in the media. Large paintings act like poignant moments, coated with the glamour of the silver screen or the languid intimacy of old Impressionist interiors. Button’s work looks not just at how we make the mass-produced image personal, but also how influences from media glamour overlay onto our own recollection of the real. As such, her works float between these two realities: the seemingly timeless dramatic narratives that abound in the media world, and the fragility of the physical relationships that make up our lives.
