Lovely in Her Bones: Solo show of work by Damaris Athene

About

‘Lovely in Her Bones’ takes its title from Theodore Roethke’s 1954 poem ‘I knew a woman’ and features a body of new work from Damaris Athene. Her black and white series of oil paintings takes its inspiration from radiology scans, while her ‘Trauma’ series depicts bruises. These soft and dreamy seemingly abstract images conflict with their subject matter – the radiology scans show types of cancer, while the beautiful bruises have been created through pain and force. Athene is fascinated by this dichotomy.

Damaris Athene was born in Bristol, UK, in 1992. She studied at Falmouth University for her Foundation Dipolma and graduated with a BA in painting from Camberwell College of Arts in 2015. Athene works across many mediums, exploring the corporeal and abstraction of the human form. She takes inspiration from a wide range of sources such as anatomy, microscopic images, derelict buildings and decaying vegetative matter. Athene worked as a painting assistant for Damien Hirst for a year after graduating, and now lives and works in Cambridge, building up a portfolio for the Royal Academy. Athene was shortlisted for the Hans Brinker Painting Prize in Amsterdam in 2014 and was selected for the Clyde and Co Art Award in 2015.