REBEKAH TULUIE
REBEKAH TULUIE
“Every work of art stems from a wound in the soul of the artists… Art is a psychological component of the auto-immune system that gives expression to the healing process.” Ted Hughes.
It was a raw need to dive deeply into my own vulnerability that gave me the courage to start to paint again after many years of primarily focusing on my filmmaking practice. My focus shifted and found balance as I rediscovered the immense sensory pleasure of making paintings. For me, the work represents a form of processing, articulating, understanding and interpreting the contours of experiences and emotions on my own terms. What connects both my involvement in filmmaking and painting is a desire to explore and communicate stories. As a filmmaker I have always been drawn to stories that move us, transport us to places beyond our experience, that challenge us to think about the world we live in and make sense of ourselves. The themes and narratives I delve into in my paintings also weave stories around the cycles of life and the natural world: the experiences, emotional and energetic states that entails.
In terms of my own enquiry, one area I am drawn to is the different notions of femininity and identity in the history of art and popular culture. In my career, I have witnessed a seismic shift in changing the canon and a push for implementing gender equality. Empowering publications such as the revisionist The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel and Women in The Picture by Catherine McCormack are studies that offer fresh ways of thinking about women’s identities, sexuality, race, protest, and power. They encourage a new lens for looking at the art of the past and embrace a wider scope of women’s vision and experience, which is necessary and timely.
MUSES – what is the significance of a dress?
“Our clothing is an unspoken language that tells stories of ourselves.” Charlie Porter
My paintings hover between abstraction and a recognisable presence. I see each work as an intimate portrait. The paintings embrace and probe at my sense of femininity and the complex cluster of feelings that involves. There are centres of tension and depth within an orchestration of sparseness and calm. There is imbalance next to poise, floating and sinking, vulnerability but with teeth.
Hiraeth: a deep, bittersweet feeling of longing and nostalgia.
REBEKAH TULUIE
Plate i: Hiraeth
152.5 x 167.5 cm. Oil on Canvas, 2019
Detail: scarlet stitches weave through lace
I have been building a series of paintings that explore both human and environmental fragility. I am curious about the relationship with my internal body and the external, in the form of clothing and textiles - deconstructing elements of fabric, pattern cutting, stitching, shape, line, texture, space. The narrative within the work is suggestive and open to discovery. Fluttering, shrouded veils, bandages or patches hide or reveal. Fabric or screens may appear torn or ripped. Scar tissue or open voids linger. Traces of stitches and repairs heal and nurture. A sense of bindings, cages, or leaden weights give way to notes of elevation, weightlessness, flight. Are they protecting or do they confine? The language of signs or symbols, perhaps shielding talismans, weave in and out. Areas of light quiver and flicker. Ripples of colour glow or perish. How these parts shift and morph fascinates me and are themes that form a common thread as I progress onward.
“Our memory is outside us, in a rainy breath of time” Annie Ernaux
tears in fabric….
Plate ii: Remnants
152.5 x 167.5 cm. Oil on Canvas, 2022 Tiny
Invitation to peek beneath the veil…
“The word ‘stitch’ is a double-edged player. It means the last bit of anything – the stigmatised, say, or the devalued. And it means to join together, mend or fasten, a hope powerful enough to drive a needle through flesh.” Olivia Laing
Clothing can represent expression, storytelling, resistance, defiance and creativity. An artist who explores femininity and the uncomfortable nooks of life that intrigue me is Louise Bourgeois, especially her fabric works and how she addresses trauma through embroidery. I can feel the bleed and bruises in this work. Likewise, the autobiographical, candid artwork of Tracey Emin punches me with its raw narrative. An exciting younger painter, Flora Yukhnovich, turns figurative experience into abstract works that have a fleshy, sticky, organic quality and her references to film and photography connect with me, given my background in those industries. In contrast, but equally powerfully, I am drawn to the meditative rhythms and linear grids of Agnes Martin and the colour washes and mark-making of Helen Frankenthaler.
My painting process is that of patiently and delicately building up thin layers of oil paint on canvas, forms lying over forms, feeling nearer or further away in relation to one another. Past ages of paint disappear, saturate, and edges dissolve, or I will rub back to reveal the history that has been. I savour the handling of paint. The pulsating mark-making will then contrast with a rhythmic movement of washes of colour that stain or move across the plane. The paintings emerge. They need time. I am drawn to a vital physicality in the act of painting.
Detail: Veiled
Plate iv: Traces
152.5 x 167.5 cm. Oil on canvas, 2018
Dark pink like a bruise…
Plate iii: Echo
152.5 x 167.5 cm. Oil on canvas, 2020
Plate iv: Deconstruct
152.5 x 167.5 cm. Oil on canvas, 2023
Detail
Peeling, torn, fragile surfaces that echo a sense of vulnerability, exposure, neglect yet they could also be of protection and boundary. Shards of memory shift and form new layers of pattern, which over time may reveal emotional states or unresolved traumas that lurk and bubble beneath the surface. Human memory retains, preserves and recovers but this is not a flawless process. Memory can be mercurial. Still areas within the space cocoon centres of possible tension or inflammation which, in part, suggest chainmail-like armour. Small circles weave to form a fabric mesh that is hard to penetrate but not impossible. There is a sense of fasteners or hooks that can enclose and mend or open and expose. A history of etched marks, maybe from a needle that has broken the surface to repair a fleshy bruised wound or a brittle garment. Stitches pull, stretch and strain – they may be constricting or instead liberating, shining a light or obscuring the narrative. A defiant rebellion against rigid constraints.
Detail: Leaden
GAIA: nature in the balance…
During the making, one painting’s narrative bleeds into the next and lived experience continues to ignite and inspire. Following a trip to an island in the Indian Ocean I was struck by the intense volume of bleached coral skeleton washed up or evident on the seabed. I hadn’t witnessed this on such a scale before. Like so much of the natural world, coral reefs are under relentless stress, trauma, and destruction from humanity’s impact on the planet. When water becomes too warm, corals expel the algae living in their tissue causing them to pale and potentially perish from starvation. Coral reefs absorb energy from waves and protect coastlines. They also teem with diverse life. I felt an urge to respond with a series of paintings that captured the fragility and vulnerable beauty of this delicate, shifting underwater eco-system. I also wanted to explore my fears of its rapid demise. Thin layers of paint and mark making build texture or are washed back to reveal intimate organic forms that emerge, connect, or hide in the canvas scape. There is a ghostly stillness in dialogue with areas of agitation and a sense of slumbering towards ruination.
Plate v: Perish
60.5 x 76 cm, Oil on Canvas, 2023
A shifting, brittle eco-system sleepwalks towards the edge of catastrophe.
Areas of quiet anxiety in dialogue with fractured silence. Fleshy, sticky matter disperses or morphs seeking armour or elevation. A way out, a place to hide…
Plate vi: Ink
39.5 x 39.5 cm, Oil on Canvas, 2023
Plate vii: Edge
39.5 x 39.5 cm, Oil on Canvas, 2023
To
Pause: Inhale, exhale…
During the pandemic I was diagnosed with a breathing pattern disorder. Breathing is life. My response was to paint through the fear threatening to rise…
In my work I find myself drawn to dualities and contradictory impulses such as vulnerability versus resilience, retreating or expanding, weightlessness in combat with compression. There is an interconnectedness of human and plant form. Soft circular shapes congregate like a shield or map the rhythms of breath. Alveoli that yearn to be punctured to allow capsules of air to hiss out, pop and release. Or they are connected to the natural world like cottonballs, exploded bladderwrack, spiky sea urchins that emerge, shift and shiver… Borders tend to leak, transition and transform from one form to another. Red stitching can represent the colour of pain, which can be healed, repaired and strengthened.
“The wound is the place where the light enters you.”
Detail: Taut
I can’t breathe…
Probing at human fragility through tension between internal vaporous space and solid congealed matter. Shapes dissolve or patterns harden. Fragments of memories conceal themselves, while rhythmic spiky episodes blast or collapse. At last, a lightness of being emerges, relief…
Plate viii: Stifle
96 x 90 cm, Oil on Canvas
“I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.”
Emily Dickinson
Study i
24 x 30 cm, Oil on Canvas
Study ii
24 x 30 cm, Oil on Canvas
Plate ix: In-Tension (work in progress)
76 x 76cm, Oil on Canvas
Whisper…
RAW-CORE: Paint conversing with paint.
A moment of transition. I wanted to loosen up my practice and explore the simple joy and emotion of colour, tone and shape interacting together. Motifs throughout the work continue but they don’t intend to represent one thing or another. Dualities remain between abstract and figurative elements. An interconnectedness between human and plant. The perceived lines of perhaps the sinuous branches of silver birch trees blur against healing bandages of limbs ravaged by rickets. There are conflicting impulses between solitary ambiguous forms – are they honeybees dancing or scar tissue healing - versus a community of grids that may offer refuge or a desire to control. There is a fine line between our emotions.
A blistering rupture of yellow…
Plate x: Pollinate
152 x 168cm, Oil on Canvas
Biographical Notes
Rebekah Tuluie grew up in Snowdonia, North Wales. She trained as a painter at Bath Academy of Art and Falmouth School of Art. After graduating, she was a scenic painter at the Royal Opera House and worked with photographers Ken Griffiths and Chris Simpson. In 1997, she published Handlines, a book in aid of the anti-personnel landmines campaign, endorsed by the Red Cross and exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery.
Rebekah’s first feature film as producer was The Edge of Love, starring Keira Knightley, and Cillian Murphy. The film brought to the screen the story of Rebekah’s grandparents’ relationship with poet Dylan Thomas to the screen. This was followed by Patagonia, directed by Marc Evans, and starring Matthew Rhys and Nahuel Perez Biscayart and with Fox Studios, Another Me, which was directed by Isabel Coixet and starred Sophie Turner and Rhys Ifans.
She began her film career in 1998 with a Forum for the Future Sir Cameron Mackintosh Scholarship, followed, in 2001, by a National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts Fellowship. In 2004, with a Sir John Terry Memorial Scholarship, she completed her MA in Film Production at the National Film and Television School, where her work received several awards. This same year, Rebekah was one of Screen International’s Stars of Tomorrow and founded Rainy Day Films. In 2008, Rebekah was honoured with a Women in Film Talkback Thames New Talent Award and featured in Tatler’s New Brit Talent list. In 2009, Rebekah completed Inside Pictures, Europe’s leading film business training and leadership programme. She was a member of the Ffilm Cymru Wales board from 2009 until 2015. In 2016, Rebekah was elected to sit on the Committee of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in Wales, BAFTA Cymru. Between 2019 and 2023 she was a visiting tutor at the National Film and Television School. In 2019, Rebekah was a founding member and creative coordinator for PhysicsX, a team of scientists and engineers devoted to making the world a better place.
Since 2022, Rebekah has been represented by Zuleika Gallery.
That same year her work was exhibited as part of the Winter Show: Fine Art and Rare Jewels at Cromwell Place London.
In January of the following year, her work was shown in Curated at Dorfold Hall: British Art Then and Now. In 2024, Rebekah’s work was selected for the Ironstone Art Prize and Exhibition at the Banbury Museum. Her work is in private collections, including a house designed by architect Roger D’Astous in Montreal and the former home and studio of painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema.
Rebekah now lives in Oxfordshire and has come full circle in reigniting her lifelong passion for painting.
