Painting in my private studio situated 5 minutes from the CBD in Adelaide, Australia, a small coastal city, my initial training was at the South Australian School of Art, where I learnt mainly how to think about the content and context of my work. I continue to refine my skills and knowledge as a painter, I feel this is life long learning. I have been painting and exhibiting for more than 30 years now, it is all consuming for me, I feel it is the only thing in the world that is mine and an expression of myself.

I arrived at painting images of women in early 2000 to reflect my personal experience as I observe what happens both around me and to me and thus the imagery evolves around this theme over time.

There is a dichotomy in the modern woman; I feel these women are silently screaming about their distress from beneath the folds of their femininity. Locked in suburbia with youth fading, their world seems an alien place, dreams are half forgotten or never going to be, what was desirable is now invisible. The flip side, of course, is that the modern woman has strength and freedom because of her experiences; she is street wise to the traps of life. The femme is free; she is strong, and in complete command of her sexuality. Most of my women in my compositions are cut off below the eyes, below the chin if they face towards you, but mostly they have their backs turned towards the viewer, the viewer hasn’t earned the right to her gaze as yet.

The scenes in my paintings are in essence cinematic, a frozen moment where you can believe that there was a before and there will be an after to be played out in your mind. Like at the movies you play the part of the passive voyeur, however the stillness of paintings allows your gaze to linger only at the visible. You can carefully inspect her hair, the sensual nape of her neck, her back, the fall of her dress, her legs, shoes etc but she’ll never turn for you to see her face, or perhaps there’s a glimpse fractured in the mirror.

My heroines are trapped in life’s unfulfilled promises. Vacant spaces equals vacant hearts, the isolated figure in the room, she is off doing psychological battle in the world but her subconscious inhabits the surrounding she has left behind, it hangs heavy in the air. If one experiences an event in environment, that event never leaves the scene, it remains cold in the shadows, hanging in the darkened corners. It’s almost as if the femme lives in a virtual snow dome, in a sheltered environment that exists in a complete and glassed idealism...she might leave the scene but the environment remains.

My femmes do not need the returned gaze, they are encased in themselves, and your role as the voyeur is to caress the surface with your eyes. The strength of female sexuality is to know one has it but not to allow others to know there is acknowledgement or not. These female subjects are not to be owned, they are independent creatures housed in their environments, not dictated by others or ruled by an abstract notion of what they should or shouldn’t be.

My femmes, however, do not dwell on their self-importance through the approval of others. My paintings house that captured moment, the still image of a woman in reflected thought, a passing desire, a cherished moment flickers on the tableau of the screen that is my painted image. Ever the perpetual pessimist, cursed by self-doubt, I leave little room for my femmes to find eternal bliss. However I do allow the occasional glimmer of hope.

- Dianne Gall