Maritime Matron

Eilean Eland’s semi-abstract female forms tell stories of powerful women who stand strong and firm in an uncertain world. To some degree they are expressions of personal identity, of self-belief. Her enduring purpose is to present an embodiment of womanly experience from a female perspective. Many familiar images of women have been produced from a male point of view, but her work is about the internal lived experience of being a woman. Her figures are made from a lived perspective, an internalised, subjective knowledge, rather than arising from an external objective male gaze. This is a strong standpoint, one that makes a statement about living in the world as a witness to events. For Eilean, her figures have both symbolic agency, the power to act, and also the capacity to observe, analyse and bear witness, especially where agency is not possible.