"The subject comes with huge baggage and I like that, says Tom de Freston. The painter and I are in his studio in a village outside Oxford, surrounded by nude portraits of his wife, the novelist Kiran Millwood Hargrave. I wanted to ask, What does it mean as a male artist to be looking at the female figure? And where does the agency sit?"
"created as the couple endured seven pregnancy losses before the birth of their daughter, Coral, in 2023. De Freston wrote about the miscarriages and Titian in his acclaimed book Strange Bodies, but these paintings were initially not intended to be exhibited, but were rather just a way of processing his own grief. It was like the studio was my space to work through stuff that was beyond language, without burdening Kiran with it."
"Over the years, De Freston has painted Millwood Hargrave in a range of mythological guises, but it is the story of Eurydice and Orpheus that resonated the most: her unreachability, his need to look to her, questions about the distances between men and women and of course the feeling of being on the threshold of an underworld of grief and loss, hoping for a pregnancy resulting in a live birth."
Tom de Freston paints large-scale works in a studio outside Oxford, often depicting nude portraits of his wife, novelist Kiran Millwood Hargrave. His Poiesis exhibition at Varvara Roza Galleries integrates figures lifted from Titian's Poesie, engaging questions of the male gaze, morality and power. Large canvases of Millwood Hargrave at stages of pregnancy respond to seven pregnancy losses before the 2023 birth of their daughter Coral. The paintings began as private grief work, a studio space to process experiences beyond language and to avoid burdening his partner. Mythological motifs, especially Eurydice and Orpheus, articulate unreachability, distance, grief and hope for live birth.
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