Artist Spotlight

The photography of Scarlett Hoey traces themes of womanhood

Jori Dudzikowski

Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK

Scarlett Hoey’s collection of photographs unites themes of womanhood, domesticity, and personal identity. Through portraiture we are introduced to the powerful women of her family, the artist herself, and the spaces these women occupy. We are invited to observe quiet moments behind closed doors, to contemplate the historic responsibility and pressure women have faced, and reflect on our personal experiences as Hoey passes the torch and pays homage to a long line of artistic female predecessors. Hoey’s body of work ranges from select pieces from her series “Australiana,” taken in 2019, to a few more recent works from 2020. Through portraiture that suggests the narratives of her family’s generations, her work transforms the weight of womanhood.

Though her practice is analog photography, Hoey’s process begins with research. Whether it be cemetery ambling, reading, or studying paintings in museums, she is an artist in constant conversation with the past. Her photographic techniques and tools connect her to the history that inspires her. For example, Hoey has the unique ability to paint with film: through dramatic lighting, framing, temperature adjustments, and subject staging, she is able to manipulate an environment to become a suspended and expressive moment in time. Although her pieces are shown digitally in this exhibition, the physical scale and framing she utilizes in a real-world gallery harkens back to the elaborate and grand presentation of Baroque painting. Her pieces are large enough to confront the viewer and assist them in entering into the worlds she creates.

Hoey’s two portraits, titled “Gran In the Brew Shop” and “Gran on the Verandah,” depict her grandmother proudly working in domestic settings in Australia. Propped with a broom and hanging laundry to dry, these two pieces harken back to tradition while also reclaiming these laborious moments as precious and personal. From Gran’s bold floral print shirts we get a sense of her personality and the pride she takes in her appearance as she is working. Her warm smile contrasts the cool tones and mysterious landscape of the brew shop. Compositionally, Gran is set back in the space and appears smaller than her task at hand. Hoey’s use of heavy shadows is painterly and creates an atmosphere of isolation and loneliness. While she has a sense of dignity as she works, there is also a heavy weight within these pieces, stressing her responsibilities within these environments. These are unthanked tasks, unglamorous, but necessary. Both of these images comment on how the hard work of women can be forgotten or taken for granted. By photographing these instances it forces us to look within our own lives and appreciate what the women in our homes do for us, even if it’s behind closed doors and has been historically expected of them.

One of Hoey’s more recent pieces, “Masked Pomona,” continues the emotion of isolation. She uses the absence of color to evoke a sense of distance between the viewer and the subject, and across time. The blurred background channels a gap in reality; a once vibrant experience, of looking into the eyes of your mother, is turned achromatic and far away. The lack of color makes this experience of mother and child feel as though time is fleeting and that it could exist somewhere in the past. This photograph offers a new perspective on modern portraiture during the pandemic. It challenges the audience to read emotion and body language through eyes alone, and channels the difficulty of engaging with a close-up portrait when we are urged to keep our distance from strangers. This image also explores a feeling of longing we have now all experienced — of being close to your loved ones but not close enough to touch them. A sort of duality is present in her mother’s eyes: a feeling of joy, a squinted eye of what could perhaps be a smile underneath her mask, and a sense of uncertainty. This portrait helps capture the history of our unprecedented times, our new familial interactions, and the bittersweetness that follows them.

Scarlett Hoey’s work expresses feminine power not through a stereotypical lens. There is a sense of power we get from hardship, from vulnerability, from fear. There is a strength to being alone, to dwelling in and adorning our

“Masked Pomona,” digital inkjet print, 2020. “Gran in the Brew Shop,” digital inkjet print, 2019

“Gran on the Verandah,” digital inkjet print, 2014.

PHOTOS BY SCARLETT HOEY/ARTSWORCESTER

spaces, from the way we dress, to the way we work, to the decisions we are faced with: this collection is a representation of humanity.

“Art History 201: Art, the Public, and Worcester’s Cultural Institutions,” at Clark University gives students the opportunity to work closely with regional contemporary artists. With individual artists from ArtsWorcester’s gallery programs, the students hone their visual and critical skills by producing short essays positioning the artists’ work within contemporary art history. This year, the students also curated small selections of their artist’s work for these online spotlights. This collaboration was funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.