No Match for Your Demons

Description

Renee Stout’s fictitious alter ego named Fatima Mayfield is among the many imaginary figures whose lives unfold in her work. Stout has described Mayfield as a “vehicle that allows me to role play in order to confront the issues, whether it’s romantic relationships, social ills, or financial woes, in a way that’s open, creative and humorous.” Her paintings We Shared a Ripe Mango, No Match for Your Demons, We Were Laughing on the Sun Porch, and The Missing Book comprise a suite of four paintings based on imaginary memories that Mayfield may have shared with others. Each panel presents a vignette painted and composed with assemblage in a magic realist style, providing fragments of a narrative that the viewer is invited to reconstruct.