Demian Shipley-Marshall
The Gift
Graphite, Watercolour, Coloured Pencil, and Ink on paper
73x51cm
2021
This piece is meant to represent the gifted girls I worked with when I was involved in education. The girl has been given her first piece of armour.The viewer is invited to see this fear, this defiance, and to recognize that this pain is being caused by people she loves and trusts, because the items are embraced by the doe. These people truly believe that these covers and restrictions are the best thing for her. Like teaching her to walk in high-heeled shoes now that she is too old to run barefoot.
POWER COUPLE
Graphite, Watercolour, Coloured Pencil, and Ink on paper
49 x 84cm
2023
This piece is inspired by my view of the "traditional" marriage industry, which I believe is used as a method to disrupt undesirable individualism for the sake of economic stability. The masculine and the feminine are domesticated to serve, guard and promote an authoritarian institution that is slowly collapsing. They remain as stoic as possible as they are eaten away and start to drift apart from each other.
Dahlia
Graphite, Watercolour, Coloured Pencil, and Ink on paper
61 x 51cm
2024
I became morbidly fascinated in the system of betrayal particularly amongst females in fundamentalist Christian communities. The "trad-wife" influencer who has sacrificed her individuality and preaches for other women to do the same, the mother telling her daughter submission to men is the only way. This system reminded me of how you hunt a unicorn in medieval mythology. The Unicorn must be lured out by a maiden into a field, once the unicorn is at rest and places it's trust in the maiden, she signals the hunters hiding nearby to attack. The unicorn is then beaten to near death, banded, and placed in an enclosure so it's power may be used by a patriarchal authority. The influence for the design of this figure is from the final panel of "La Chasse à la Licorne". She now wears her new face and conforms to her new role as she contemplates a black dahlia, the flower of betrayal she is required to pass on.