Ebony Winnett

The First Year explores the intimacy of domestic labour by capturing the mundane moments that have shaped my experience of home during the first year of my marriage. Drawing from the Intimism movement of the late 19th-early 20th century, this series began with a desire to commemorate my husband’s private gestures of labour and love. Choosing to paint, rather than photograph these scenes, allowed me to create altered and heightened domestic environments where the relationship between the labour and labourer is dignified and warm.  Attempting to remove the associations of household work with oppression, constraint, and gender stereotypes, my work innovates upon the historical tradition of genre painting, emphasising the male labourer. The abstract style enables me to depict edited and constructed spaces, inviting the viewer into the intimate moments of my home life while retaining privacy.