Pen Dalton London, United Kingdom

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Of Irish origin, Dalton grew up, was state educated and lives and works in London. An erstwhile lecturer in Higher Education, an art writer and critic, she has published,exhibited and lectured internationally on subjectivity and identity. In recent years she has focussed painting, exploring through mediums and techniques, relations of difference analagous to human and social relationships.

The critical language used to describe Pen's painting refers to subaltern identities: the feminine, the childlike and primitive. Its associations are Rococo: a critical art term used to describe the frivolous, irrational, decorative, superficial, meretricious with an emphasis on visual pleasure, colour and the seductions of texture and painterly brushwork. Often regarded as meretricious and associated with Essex girls, wallpaper, textiles, fashion and makeup - socialist critics have always steered clear of it. it represents a direct challenge to single point perspective, restrained themes of neo-classicism and the scientistic abstractions of Modernism. The relations of paint itself can be regarded as analogies for overtly polemical themes of issue based or socially contextualised art practice.