Ishbel explores the cryptic, which often juxtaposes the hyperreal in her work and she is motivated by her paintings becoming vessels.
She centres queerness through an autobiographical feminist lens, using painting to define undefined things. Ishbel engages with an array of influences such as mysticism, sci-fi and queer theory. She applies these to investigate tensions between the known and unknown. Ishbel uses painting to examine categories and classifications, blending materiality using both painted and real objects as interventions in their work. Through manipulating different sensuous and visual languages and colours, she creates ‘illusionisms’ that challenge boundaries of surfaces and more…
She is currently working on a series about a ‘witch in a bottle’, an artefact found in England, 1915 and held in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. Ishbel aims to understand, legitimise and hopefully release the witch trapped inside!