The artist Liselotte Watkins creates work that celebrates the female spirit with abstracted figures of defiance, assurance and vulnerability. Turning to ceramics after an illustrious 25-year career for the likes of Vogue, Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar, and the New York Times, the Rome-based artist has always drawn for a vivid dream life and interest in society’s fringe.
Watkins’ latest body of work is a meditation of Swedish psychiatrist Axel Munthe, with sculptures inspired by the ladies of society who sought out Munthe in his time. Rendered in a muted palette and inspired by antique ceramics and collage, the dreamlike figures are sometimes placed upside down, abstracted or given sealed “voided” openings. Returning continually to the female form, Watkins’ army of women often bear outsized lips, pregnant bellies and mysterious faces which draw to mind iconic artist Niki de Saint Phalle’s feminist Nanas.