Simone Kennedy Doig

Simone Kennedy Doig spent the first eight years of her life in East London, before moving to Trinidad with her family. She returned to her childhood borough to complete her studies and stayed. Hybrid identity as the consequence of migration is the most important themes in Doig's painting. The second is women: their subjectivity, autonomy and mutual relations. Her realistic, narrative paintings feature a wide range of saturated colours, making the experience of depicted scenes much more intense. Such use of colour, as well as illustrative, often simplified approach to figures, evokes associations with Latin American painting. Doig's uses the medium to interpret everyday life, especially that characteristic to her local area. East London houses a large Trinidadian community. The artist depicts scenes from local bars, crowded streets, or public toilets, paying special attention to the neighbourhood’s fashion and customs. The painting presented at the exhibition, ‘St. Ann Sisters’, shows a typical scene in which the protagonists are the eponymous nurses (employees of a psychiatric hospital in Trinidad).