Switch off the light and let me try on your dress

‘Did you know that Doris was the mother of the nereids?’

Painter John Skinner transforms everyday objects – cars – trees, bodies – into startling pictures that aim to show us life afresh. Switch off the light and let me try on your dress looks at the creative process though the lens of his work.

‘A huge, red and pink elephant chicken gapes at a near-naked woman as she steps forward wearing the public mouth of celebrity. The painting’s title is: As She Stepped Into Her Car She Smiled At Her Reflection In The Wing Mirror.

So, it’s a car, not a chicken or an elephant, but we were right, it is a woman. Now the picture makes some sense. The painter must be making a satiric comment about the commodification of modern womanhood and the destructive, narcissistic effects of consumer culture. Look at the size of her bare, wobbly bottom!

But what if she wasn’t a woman at all? What if she was the sea?

Her creator, John Skinner says that she is a Nereid, a sea nymph, a personification of the ocean borrowed from Greek myth.’

Published by Agre Books in 2002.