Chantal Joffe (B. 1969)

With her fluid and expressive brush, Chantal Joffe reinterprets childhood snapshots, transforming the anodyne and everyday into richly animated portraits of exuberant energy. A pair of young friends hold hands in their smart school uniforms; two older girls pose in dresses in a park. Two more beam from other sunlit settings, showing the same sartorial glee. On plain backgrounds like those of a photoshoot, two blonde girls – perhaps the same person at different ages – are by turns awkwardly teenage in a white bra and grinning with childish shyness. While at first glance Joffe’s style may appear naïve, this swiftly gives way to an impression of supreme elegance and confidence with paint. Celebratory and spontaneous, these fearsomely bright images are bursting with joy and personality. ‘When you are painting,’ she says, ‘that is the most alive, the most present tense, you are ever going to be. There’s nothing else.’