Rebecca Jones Artist Statement:

The conceptual underpinning for this series, Wild Things, relates to linguist Suzanne Romaine’s description of the cultural construction of women as aligned with nature rather than civilisation - something to be conquered or controlled1. She contrasts ideas of “Mother Nature” and “virgin territory” with the masculine authority implied by a nation’s “founding fathers.” Amanda Montell summarises this in her book Wordslut: “In grammar as in allegory as in life, women are considered reckless places outside the civilised male world - wild things meant to be tamed into weak, delicate flowers we've traditionally wanted women to be.”2

When beginning this second body of drawings for my Chosen Words series, I wanted the work to be untamed. I also wanted to use my knowledge of the history and material nature of drawing in an explosive and exciting way. These drawings had to be a force of nature and an honest embodiment of my experience of making them. I tuned into the frequency of people doing this through their music: Amy Taylor, Taylor Swift and Chappell Roan. Because if I can, through my drawing, be a bit like them, then I can be all of me.

1 Amanda Montell, Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language (Melbourne: Nero, 2019), 151.

2 Montell, Wordslut, 151.