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pattern and painting
Delpha with Roses and other phantoms at Porthmeor studios 2022. Photo credit: Pete Knight

Delpha is an artist based in Penzance, Cornwall. She has been making art about women, value and visibility since the late 90s. She uses a range of interdisciplinary media including performance, film, installation.

When you’ve been around so long you are goddess of many things, Tremenheere Gallery, April 2023

Current colourful historical-contemporary paintings aim to reconfigure representations of women and stories in relation to history, time and place in order to to promote care for ourselves, others and the world around us.

painting about collectivity and care
Infinitely boundless as the human heart, acrylic on canvas, 210x160cm, 2023

contemporary figurative painting
Creatures that tip the scales in our favour, acrylic on canvas, 210x170cm, 2023

Artist’s Statement

Painting creates extraordinary spaces that register presence. All painting is about mythology, and creating fictions that act as a strong identification with the human condition. Assimilating mythologies from the past and realising them in a language of the present gives us power over our lives; imaging and imagining a world where  care is universal, shared and valued.

My paintings use a language that I think of as a ‘vernacular’. There are recognisable and interpretable figures, symbols and patterns that aim to engage our empathy, promote and value for those who care for world around us. These are primarily women, who around the world perform 80% of domestic work and care, often for no monetary remuneration or even societal recognition or value.

Tiny figures creep out from colourful ornamental designs, crowded scenes and patterned designs are often resonant of medieval art or ‘old masters’ yet parody power structures and constraints on women’s lives. They often satirise hierarchies in which women – and especially mothers have been absent.

Sometimes the ‘main stage’ of large paintings focuses on opaque, idealised female figures who are ‘permeable’ fluid female archetypes that evoke issues around visibility by creating a tension between absence and presence. Figures are juxtaposed with surreal domestic scenes, patterns and landscapes that are intentionally heaving with symbols and historical references that pull you backwards and forwards through time.

I think of painting as a way of thinking through complex systems, with multiple and entangled narratives. Creating multiple threads and rewriting stories, art works laugh at and explore reciprocity and care – for ourselves, for each other and for the world around us.

painting for sale
In the soup, acrylic on canvas, 190x165cm, 2022

painting for sale
The monsters that make us, mixed media on canvas, 200x160cm, 2022

painting for sale
The sixth sense of understanding, acrylic on canvas, 200x180cm, 2021

Read more about Delpha …

painting with female knight doing contemporary cleaning
Standard bearer, mixed media on canvas, 195x160cm, 2022

Delpha often works in other painting media besides acrylic on canvas including bitumen and oil or watercolour and ink:

delpha hudson painting for sale
She wanted to swim through the broadest of lives, oil & bitumen on canvas, 50x50x4cm, 2020

colourful painting
White rhino, black rhino, mixed media on canvas, 90x30x4cm, 2019

figurative watercolour for sale
All the people we have to be to get through the day, watercolour & ink, 42x30cm, 2020
paintings on paper
The price of truth (whose truth?) 42x30cm, watercolour and ink, 2023

writing painting
Family on a tight rope, watercolour & ink, 42x30cm, 2022

watercolour painting
Living cloth, watercolour and ink on paper, 42x30cm, 2022

Delpha also works in sculpture; installation; for current performance work – have a look at special projects or film.


artist in her studio
Delpha at Porthmeor Studios, 2022. Photo film credit: Pete Knight

Watch a film of Delpha talking about her work or view most recent paintings