Outsiders as Drawn by an Outsider: Jo Brocklehurst and London After Dark

Jo Brock­le­hurst moved through London’s under­ground as both a wit­ness and accom­plice of life on the fringes of cul­ture, sketch­ing punks, goths, club kids, and club­bers with uncom­pro­mis­ing empa­thy. Decades lat­er, her draw­ings are scat­tered, near­ly unseen, and uncan­ni­ly ahead of their time.

For more than forty years, a sin­gle artist pro­duced an extra­or­di­nary record of life at the edges of main­stream soci­ety in a man­ner and scale no oth­er artist attempt­ed. Punks, fetishists, dancers, actors, drag per­form­ers, musi­cians, club kids, anar­chists, and night crea­tures of every descrip­tion passed through her line. Yet despite the pro­lif­ic nature and orig­i­nal­i­ty of the work, Jo Brock­le­hurst nev­er became a house­hold name. Her draw­ings sur­face spo­rad­i­cal­ly in gal­leries and auc­tion rooms, while much of her out­put remains scat­tered in pri­vate hands, stor­age box­es, and unre­solved estates. None are on per­ma­nent muse­um dis­play. Those who knew her insist she was years ahead of her time.

Jo Brock­le­hurst moved through Lon­don like a phan­tom. In night­clubs thick with smoke and strobe light, in Soho strip joints, in the Blitz Club at the height of New Roman­tic excess, in anar­chist punk squats, in fetish balls where latex and steel flashed under ultra­vi­o­let lamps, a tall woman in a blonde wig and stacked dark glass­es stood qui­et­ly in the cor­ner draw­ing, her paper bare­ly vis­i­ble in the dark recess­es of the clubs. Peo­ple remem­ber the dis­guise before they remem­ber the face. They remem­ber the huge sheets of paper, the pas­tels, the speed of her hand. Often they did not real­ize they had been seen until weeks lat­er, when some­one pro­duced a draw­ing in which they appeared sharp­er, stranger, and more essen­tial than they had ever looked in a mir­ror. “I don’t ana­lyze my rea­sons for paint­ing my sub­jects,” she said. “I just feel instinc­tive­ly that I want to paint a par­tic­u­lar per­son; it is a com­pul­sion.”

The com­pul­sion stemmed from a life­long inter­est in peo­ple and their appear­ances. Not con­tent to mere­ly present her­self in an uncon­ven­tion­al way, she sought to bring out the over­looked beau­ty of oth­ers at the edges of main­stream soci­ety through her life­long career as an artist. How­ev­er, she her­self was infa­mous­ly secre­tive about her life, opt­ing to present her­self through her out­ward appear­ance rather than her back­ground.

What is gen­er­al­ly accept­ed is that Jo (Josephine) Blanche Brock­le­hurst was born on August 6, 1935 and died on Jan­u­ary 29, 2006. She entered the world under cir­cum­stances she would spend a life­time obscur­ing. Her moth­er was a Lon­don house­keep­er. Her birth cer­tifi­cate named no father. It lat­er became known that she was the ille­git­i­mate child of an Eng­lish moth­er and an unknown senior Sri Lankan polit­i­cal fig­ure “who had his face on a stamp.” Even close friends remained unaware of her mixed her­itage. She nev­er revealed her exact age, her spe­cif­ic ances­try, and treat­ed ques­tions about her past as irrel­e­vant. What mat­tered was the work.

Known as Josie to her fam­i­ly, she grew up in Dorset with her moth­er and aunt and was evac­u­at­ed to rel­a­tives in Cheshire dur­ing the Sec­ond World War. Though born and lat­er dying in Hamp­stead, she guard­ed the facts of her ear­ly life with remark­able con­sis­ten­cy. Friends lat­er recalled that she nev­er felt entire­ly Eng­lish and expe­ri­enced prej­u­dice from an ear­ly age. Artist Patri­cia Buck­ley described a walk up Pic­cadil­ly dur­ing which she com­ment­ed on how Eng­lish Brock­le­hurst looked. Brock­le­hurst replied, “Oh, I like to pre­tend.” She spoke in a refined accent often com­pared to Joan­na Lum­ley.

In life she was con­sid­ered strik­ing­ly beau­ti­ful, a fact that com­pli­cat­ed her rela­tion­ship with the world. Tall, poised, and intense­ly self con­scious, she often con­cealed her appear­ance beneath wigs, hats, and sun­glass­es, often worn in mul­ti­ple pairs at once. Friends believed the dis­guise was part­ly a reac­tion to the prej­u­dice she had faced both as a young woman and as a per­son of mixed British and Sri Lankan her­itage. It also cre­at­ed dis­tance. Brock­le­hurst could observe with­out being observed.

Her artis­tic pre­coc­i­ty was evi­dent ear­ly. Fol­low­ing years spent at Wool­wich Poly­tech­nic School for Girls in Lon­don (believed to have been fund­ed by her absent father), she entered St Martin’s School of Art short­ly before her four­teenth birth­day on a junior schol­ar­ship scheme, an exper­i­men­tal pro­gram that rec­og­nized excep­tion­al tal­ent at a young age. At St Martin’s she learned to draw with extra­or­di­nary speed and pre­ci­sion, study­ing under tutors includ­ing Fred­die Gore, John Minton, Eliz­a­beth Suter, and Muriel Pem­ber­ton. Suter’s life draw­ing class­es were par­tic­u­lar­ly influ­en­tial. She hired uncon­ven­tion­al per­form­ers, dressed in eccen­tric out­fits, to pose as draw­ing mod­els. The the­atri­cal­i­ty of these fig­ures res­onat­ed deeply with Brocklehurst’s sen­si­bil­i­ties. It was here where she honed her eye for pro­por­tions and anato­my, learn­ing to pro­duce work at a pace con­sid­ered noth­ing less than remark­able for her lev­el.

Those that knew her recalled she arrived at St Martin’s already pos­sess­ing a high­ly indi­vid­ual style. She could appear in out­fits extreme even by art school stan­dards. One tutor recalled her attend­ing class wear­ing two pairs of Welling­ton boots at the same time, with one pair worn inside the oth­er. She attract­ed atten­tion upon enter­ing a room, then retreat­ed into silence, hid­ing her eyes behind dark, over­sized sun­glass­es (some­times up to three pairs at a time, even while draw­ing), long jet-black hair or a blonde wig, and wide-brimmed hat pulled over her head, her beau­ty revealed only for a moment when­ev­er she raised her head to glance at the mod­el she was draw­ing. Fel­low stu­dents gath­ered around her draw­ings, while Brock­le­hurst con­tin­ued to remain shy and unas­sum­ing. When she left the stu­dio, they whis­pered her name in hushed admi­ra­tion.

Her child­hood tal­ent was not con­fined to draw­ing. She was an excep­tion­al ath­lete, a mem­ber of the Sel­so­nia Ladies Ath­let­ic Club and the High­gate Har­ri­ers, where she played at the nation­al lev­el in shot put and rep­re­sent­ed Eng­land in dis­cus throw­ing. Rel­a­tives lat­er said Olympic com­pe­ti­tion would have been with­in reach had she pur­sued sport. Instead she chose art, though she retained an ath­let­ic lifestyle through­out her life and cycled dai­ly through the hills of Hamp­stead.

She began her career as an illus­tra­tor for var­i­ous fash­ion mag­a­zines and was briefly involved with­in bohemi­an Lon­don cir­cles. This brush with the lives of uncon­ven­tion­al artists cou­pled with her expo­sure to the meth­ods of Suter implant­ed in her a pas­sion to draw­ing peo­ple from uncon­ven­tion­al walks of life, with­out regard for whether it would affect her rep­u­ta­tion as an artist or her prospects in the com­mer­cial world, her posi­tion as a woman artist in the field of art was unin­hib­it­ed by fears of how she would be per­ceived, which formed a core part of her char­ac­ter as both a cre­ative and an indi­vid­ual.

Leav­ing fash­ion behind, she lat­er reject­ed the label “illus­tra­tor,” pre­fer­ring painter or draughtsper­son. After fin­ish­ing her edu­ca­tion at St Martin’s, she con­tin­ued attend­ing cos­tume life draw­ing class­es in the fash­ion depart­ment and main­tained close ties to the school for decades, lat­er teach­ing and guest lec­tur­ing to future gen­er­a­tions of design­ers, still in her flam­boy­ant ensem­bles.

Sue Dray, now a course leader of BA Fash­ion Illus­tra­tion at the Lon­don Col­lege of Fash­ion, was once a stu­dent that was a mem­ber of the class­es taught by Brock­le­hurst in the 70s, recall­ing her as “a small woman behind huge draw­ings … get­ting exact­ly what she want­ed from the mod­el. She was very much a fem­i­nist” she con­tin­ues, “with a strong opin­ion about women’s roles as artists and how we were rec­og­nized. I think that’s why the draw­ings were so bru­tal. We weren’t going to roman­ti­cize any­thing about the mod­els. It was about extract­ing char­ac­ter. She was work­ing in a peri­od when the sub­cul­ture was still the sub­cul­ture.”

Still, as fas­ci­nat­ed as peo­ple were in how she looked, Brock­le­hurst was equal­ly fas­ci­nat­ed by how oth­ers looked. “The streets are full of mar­vel­lous peo­ple, you’ve only got to look.”, Brock­le­hurst once said. Nat­u­ral­ly, she drew con­stant­ly and treat­ed delay, bore­dom, and tran­sit as oppor­tu­ni­ties rather than incon­ve­niences. She did not mind sit­ting for hours on a stalled bus because she always car­ried paper and pens, using the time to sketch who­ev­er and what­ev­er unfold­ed around her. She cap­tured places, fleet­ing sit­u­a­tions, and the faces of strangers with a rapid, deci­sive line that con­veyed move­ment and char­ac­ter in sec­onds. Each day she left home with the spe­cif­ic inten­tion of draw­ing, often with a sub­ject already in mind, mov­ing through the city with the qui­et focus of some­one work­ing rather than mere­ly observ­ing.

From the 1950s onward she drew in clubs and music venues. In the 1960s she sketched jazz musi­cians includ­ing George Mel­ly. Dur­ing these years her inter­est in fash­ion illus­tra­tion gave way to a fas­ci­na­tion with nightlife and sub­cul­ture. Dressed in black, face hid­den behind Cut­ler and Gross sun­glass­es, she worked in Soho strip clubs and jazz dives, cre­at­ing all of her por­traits on site main­ly using crayons or pas­tels on large sheets of paper.

By the late 1970s she began the work that would go on to cement her rep­u­ta­tion as a tru­ly ground­break­ing illus­tra­tor. Brock­le­hurst had become a famil­iar but dis­creet pres­ence at the Blitz Club in Covent Gar­den, epi­cen­ter of the New Roman­tic move­ment. The Blitz Kids com­pet­ed in extrav­a­gance, gen­der flu­id styling, and the­atri­cal self inven­tion, often com­pet­ing to see who would show up in the most out­landish or intri­cate out­fits. “She said it wasn’t just the clothes,” accord­ing to cura­tor Olivia Ahmad, “It was more than anthro­po­log­i­cal. She had an empa­thy with out­siders. It was a feel­ing out of human­i­ty.”

Although she was often con­fined to the dark cor­ners of the Blitz Club, she was imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able to her 70s style black vel­vet jack­et, wig, and shades worn inside. If that was­n’t enough, Brock­le­hurst was said to have made her entrance to the clubs by rolling in shop­ping carts full of sketch­books, rolls of paper, and draw­ing mate­ri­als, cap­tur­ing elab­o­rate cos­tumes, metal­lic fab­rics, ani­mal prints, neon make­up, spiky hair, and most impor­tant­ly, their care­ful­ly staged pos­es. “I drew these char­ac­ters because I saw them around the streets near where I live and I thought they looked won­der­ful,” Brock­le­hurst said. “I felt that they under­stood very well what was going on in the world, what was in it for them.”

Brock­le­hurst encour­aged her sub­jects to adopt provoca­tive pos­es, unashamed and eager to be seen. Her draw­ings reg­is­ter their con­fi­dence as they moved beyond social expec­ta­tions, exper­i­ment­ing with sex­u­al­i­ty and gen­der pre­sen­ta­tion in ways that defied con­ven­tion. Their styling and pos­ture reflect delib­er­ate, inven­tive choic­es that turned alien­ation into self-def­i­n­i­tion with­in a cul­ture and time that often met dif­fer­ence with sus­pi­cion.

Her draw­ings from the late 1970s and ear­ly 1980s remain her most rec­og­nized works. Dur­ing this peri­od, her sub­jects includ­ed local celebri­ties such as Blitz Club cabaret and New Roman­tic duo James Bid­dle­combe and Eve Fer­ret to glob­al­ly-rec­og­nized fig­ures such as Siouxsie Sioux, Boy George, Marc Almond, the per­for­mance impre­sario Philip Salon, and dancers from the com­pa­ny of famous chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Pina Bausch in Berlin. Notably, many of her por­traits were of Isabelle Brick­nall, her life­long friend, muse, and col­lab­o­ra­tor.

The most reveal­ing insight into Brocklehurst’s life and work­ing meth­ods comes from Brick­nall, but Brock­le­hurst would not reveal her age even to her through­out their rela­tion­ship. “She saw her­self as time­less and age­less.” Before they met, Brick­nall was at Not­ting­ham Trent study­ing her MA in fash­ion and tex­tiles, with the intent on becom­ing a design­er, where she encoun­tered Brock­le­hurst as a vis­it­ing teacher of fash­ion illus­tra­tion.

Brick­nall also remem­bered Brock­le­hurst as an impos­ing pres­ence in the class­room: tall, beau­ti­ful, with an intense gaze, strict about dis­ci­pline and silence, and insist­ing stu­dents learn the pow­er of con­cen­tra­tion. She dis­cour­aged small sketch­pads, urg­ing stu­dents to use wall­pa­per lin­ing paper so their draw­ings could expand phys­i­cal­ly and ener­get­i­cal­ly.

The two first offi­cial­ly met in the ear­ly 1980s through their mutu­al friend, the teacher and fash­ion illus­tra­tor Col­in Barnes, who would do work for cou­ture shows. The strong-fea­tured Brick­nall was mod­el­ling in an extrav­a­gant Chris­t­ian Lacroix tweed cou­ture out­fit when Brock­le­hurst arrived for tea and, cap­ti­vat­ed by her appear­ance, insist­ed on draw­ing her, telling him “he had to share”.

Barnes, slight­ly frus­trat­ed, pro­posed they sketch her simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. Accord­ing to Brick­nall, Barnes’ ren­der­ing made her look like “the epit­o­me of grace and ele­gance”, while Brocklehurst’s cap­tured some­thing more volatile and psy­cho­log­i­cal, “like I’d just escaped from an asy­lum.” Brick­nall loved both images, not­ing that Brock­le­hurst seemed intent on reveal­ing the woman with­in the clothes rather than the gar­ments them­selves.

Barnes, a lec­tur­er at the Roy­al Col­lege of Arts, St Mar­tins, and Not­ting­ham Trent, worked togeth­er with Brock­le­hurst while she was involved in the fash­ion illus­tra­tion depart­ment. Their con­nec­tion deep­ened when Brick­nall moved to Lon­don after com­plet­ing her stud­ies in Not­ting­ham, where Barnes lec­tured and Brock­le­hurst occa­sion­al­ly cov­ered class­es.

Brick­nall went on to work in the fash­ion indus­try with design­ers includ­ing Zan­dra Rhodes and devel­oped a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary prac­tice span­ning tex­tiles, glass, steel, film, pho­tog­ra­phy, and per­for­mance. This shared cre­ative range drew the two togeth­er. Brick­nall mod­elled her own exper­i­men­tal designs while Brock­le­hurst drew them; they col­lab­o­rat­ed on exhi­bi­tions and art projects; Brick­nall lat­er assist­ed in archiv­ing Brocklehurst’s work. They vis­it­ed clubs togeth­er and main­tained a cre­ative part­ner­ship that last­ed until Brocklehurst’s death. “It was so great to meet some­one who you could real­ly trust, espe­cial­ly anoth­er woman; she became some­thing of a men­tor. She had so much ener­gy and dri­ve and was just so much fun to be around. We’d go on lots of adven­tures and get into lots of trou­ble togeth­er.” she recalls of Brock­le­hurst.

Brick­nall empha­sized Brocklehurst’s relent­less dri­ve, com­pelled to cre­ate rather than to cul­ti­vate a mar­ket. She sold work only when nec­es­sary, often to finance trav­el. “She didn’t give a shit about impress­ing peo­ple,” Brick­nall said. “Her sketch­books were like her diaries. She drew every sin­gle day. She was dri­ven to cre­ate. I think there are a lot of great artists that can slip through the net because they’re not all about the cash. The only time she’d sell stuff would be because she need­ed the mon­ey to facil­i­tate a trip. She was the real deal. She was extra­or­di­nary.”

One of the few who could keep up with Brock­le­hurst’s relent­less out­put, she fol­lowed her to the places where she pro­duced much of her most famous work. Brock­le­hurst’s non-judge­men­tal and empa­thet­ic atti­tude won her an audi­ence with many dif­fer­ent peo­ple on the alter­na­tive side of cul­ture and nightlife. “She was draw­ing every kind of scene,” Isabelle Brick­nall recalls.

In the 1960s, Jo Brock­le­hurst occurred after she moved into an artist’s stu­dio at 12 West­bere Road in West Hamp­stead where she would remain until the end of her life. It was here where she would piv­ot to cap­tur­ing one of the most mem­o­rable scenes of her career. The mod­est North Lon­don address and its sur­round­ings became both a work­ing space and a point of qui­et con­ver­gence for sub­cul­tures mov­ing through the city. By the ear­ly 1980s the street had become an unlike­ly over­lap between Hamp­stead domes­tic calm and DIY dis­or­der, in the form of an anar­cho-punk squat­ter scene qui­et­ly devel­op­ing on the same street.

One of the fig­ures orbit­ing this scene was zine edi­tor Tony Dray­ton, who arrived in Lon­don from Cum­ber­nauld, Scot­land in April 1977 after edit­ing the ear­ly punk pub­li­ca­tion Ripped and Torn. His life moved between Lon­don, Paris, and Ams­ter­dam and includ­ed jobs as var­ied as fire eat­ing. After a peri­od spent liv­ing in var­i­ous squats, in the fall of 1979 Tony and his sis­ter Val, who had joined him in the city a year before, met a group of punks in West Hamp­stead, includ­ing Eve (Car­ol Mills), for­mer part­ner of Adam Ant (Stu­art God­dard), and bassist Kevin Mooney, lat­er of Adam and the Ants.

They were offered an emp­ty flat at 33 Sher­riff Road, part of a house run by the West Hamp­stead Hous­ing Asso­ci­a­tion. The house­hold includ­ed Andi and Ross, musi­cians from Aus­tralian bands The Urban Guer­ril­las, along with Dave Roberts, lat­er of Sex Gang Chil­dren, as well as Andy Groome and Mal­colm Bax­ter, of Aus­tralian punk band The Last Words. Mon­ey was scarce. They earned about £6 a day deliv­er­ing leaflets and spent much of it drink­ing at the near­by Rail­way pub or attend­ing shows at the Moon­light Club.

Dray­ton began edit­ing a new zine, titled Kill Your Pet Pup­py, with the first issue pro­duced for Adam and the Ants’ New Year’s Day 1980 show at the Elec­tric Ball­room in Cam­den. 500 copies sold out that night and were reprint­ed. Now call­ing them­selves the Pup­py Col­lec­tive, the group pro­duced six issues through 1983 while Dray­ton also wrote for Record Mir­ror, New Musi­cal Express, and Zigzag. In the sum­mer of 1980 Tony and Val moved into anoth­er WHHA prop­er­ty at 39 West­bere Road and this is where their world col­lid­ed with that of Jo Brock­le­hurst. One day, Brock­le­hurst saw the punks pass­ing her win­dow and was struck by their appear­ance. She invit­ed them into her stu­dio and began mak­ing the draw­ings that would become one of the most vivid visu­al records of the scene. Soon, the col­lec­tive, which includ­ed squat­ters from the Cen­tro Iberi­co squat in Not­ting Hill and the Wap­ping Auton­o­my Cen­tre, became reg­u­lar vis­i­tors and mod­els.

Inside the small stu­dio, the atmos­phere was incon­gru­ous and odd­ly cer­e­mo­ni­al. Punks in full regalia sprawled across sofas and chairs, drink­ing tea from fine chi­na while wait­ing to be drawn. One sit­ter remained motion­less, eyes fixed on the ceil­ing, bemused but qui­et­ly pleased that the artist down the street want­ed to draw her and her friends, lured in by the promise of bot­tom­less Earl Grey. This mix­ture of domes­tic calm, rit­u­al hos­pi­tal­i­ty, and rad­i­cal self-pre­sen­ta­tion became a recur­ring tableau in Brocklehurst’s West Hamp­stead stu­dio, where sub­cul­tur­al defi­ance briefly paused, posed, and was trans­formed into art.

They lat­er said her draw­ings trans­formed them into “war­riors,” ampli­fy­ing pres­ence and intent rather than sim­ply record­ing appear­ance. Brock­le­hurst’s con­tri­bu­tion was cer­tain­ly wel­comed by them, in a time when being punk was often a label whose mean­ings were decid­ed oth­ers. Lifestyle and image, and pre­sent­ing the lat­ter on their terms and in a way that made sense to them was cen­tral to the col­lec­tive. “The way we live and the way we por­tray our­selves makes the world a bet­ter place, gives it a bet­ter atmos­phere, a more free and sen­su­al atmos­phere.” Tony Dray­ton once said. Brock­le­hurst, all too hap­py to oblige, also believed in the pow­er of shar­ing new per­spec­tives. “For me, the plea­sure in being an artist is not to build up a rep­u­ta­tion for doing the same thing, but to com­ment on dif­fer­ent kinds of lives.”

Just a few years before her encoun­ters with the Pup­py Col­lec­tive, Jo Brock­le­hurst was already mov­ing into the spot­light. Her first solo exhi­bi­tion took place in Ams­ter­dam in 1979, intro­duc­ing audi­ences to her sharply observed fig­u­ra­tive draw­ings. The real break­through came in Octo­ber of the fol­low­ing year with the inclu­sion of four of her works at an exhi­bi­tion titled Women’s Images of Men at the Insti­tute of Con­tem­po­rary Arts, a polit­i­cal­ly charged event that chal­lenged mas­cu­line stereo­types and fore­ground­ed fem­i­nist per­spec­tives in con­tem­po­rary art, the cul­mi­na­tion of a move­ment sev­er­al years in the mak­ing in response to an exhi­bi­tion of works by Allen Jones, whose art was crit­i­cized as depict­ing women in a demean­ing light. The artist, in response, iron­i­cal­ly cast him­self as a fem­i­nist, due to his focus on depict­ing the female form.

The show aver­aged some 1,000 vis­i­tors a day, break­ing all pre­vi­ous atten­dance records, with a line that ran from the ICA build­ing to Trafal­gar Square. Crit­ics not­ed the way Brocklehurst’s work in par­tic­u­lar com­bined psy­cho­log­i­cal inten­si­ty with wit, and more than one drew com­par­isons to Egon Schiele, an asso­ci­a­tion that would remain with the artist through­out her life­time and beyond.

The ICA show rapid­ly ele­vat­ed her pro­file. Along­side her skills as an artist, Brock­le­hurst devel­oped a strong affin­i­ty with women artists and fem­i­nist net­works, and her draw­ings gained atten­tion for their abil­i­ty to dis­man­tle mas­cu­line expec­ta­tions while retain­ing empa­thy and humor. Rid­ing this momen­tum, Brock­le­hurst exhib­it­ed at the Fran­cis Kyle Gallery in Lon­don in 1981 and 1982, fol­lowed by shows in New York with Leo Castel­li and at Con­necti­cut State Uni­ver­si­ty a year lat­er. The sub­jects of these exhi­bi­tions, punks, goths, New Roman­tics, and oth­er sub­cul­tur­al fig­ures, felt urgent and con­tem­po­rary, cap­tur­ing the body as both armor and per­for­mance.

Accord­ing to Brick­nall, the punk-era exhi­bi­tions with Fran­cis Kyle, despite sell­ing well, left Brock­le­hurst with a lin­ger­ing sense of dis­sat­is­fac­tion. The income allowed her to clear a mod­est mort­gage, yet she felt the work had been under­val­ued and, to an extent, mis­un­der­stood. Asked why their col­lab­o­ra­tion end­ed, Kyle offers a sim­ple expla­na­tion: she told him she had new state­ments she want­ed to make.

This was no sur­prise, as Brock­le­hurst resist­ed being boxed in and con­stant­ly sought to tell new sto­ries through her por­traits. She lived the artist’s life in the old sense, sell­ing work spo­rad­i­cal­ly to finance trav­el and mate­ri­als. At a time when the art estab­lish­ment kept its dis­tance from acknowl­edg­ing sub­cul­tures, she was drawn instead to them, treat­ing them as vital sub­jects worth trav­el­ing the world for rather than curiosi­ties to be panned by a bewil­dered press. She began trav­el­ing exten­sive­ly, the New York exhi­bi­tion in 1983 marked the begin­ning of reg­u­lar stays in the city as well as reg­u­lar trips to Berlin, Ams­ter­dam, Rome, and Paris, all while keep­ing detailed visu­al diaries, exper­i­ment­ing with mate­ri­als and envi­ron­ments, and refus­ing to sim­ply repro­duce the punk por­traits col­lec­tors expect­ed.

In New York, she sketched in the neon-lit gay clubs of the Meat­pack­ing Dis­trict, some­times incor­po­rat­ing spray paint and ultra­vi­o­let pig­ments, a cre­ative choice as well as a prac­ti­cal one, as the lat­ter medi­um was more read­i­ly vis­i­ble under club light­ing. Dur­ing this peri­od she is believed to have inter­sect­ed with the fem­i­nist col­lec­tive Guer­ril­la Girls, a group estab­lished in 1985 in response to an atmos­phere of sex­ism in the art world. The group assist­ed her with get­ting her work shown, in a time when it was still dif­fi­cult for many women to get shown in gal­leries. Addi­tion­al­ly, Brock­le­hurst formed a friend­ship with Kei­th Har­ing.

Wher­ev­er she went, she worked eas­i­ly in heat and dark­ness, whether it was sketch­ing in air­less Berlin base­ments or the dim inte­ri­ors of Ams­ter­dam’s seedy venues. She drew dancers, per­form­ers, and club kids in sec­onds, reduc­ing ges­ture to a deci­sive line while absorb­ing the atmos­phere around her. More than one observ­er through­out her life has described her abil­i­ty to draw in dark­ness, while also wear­ing mul­ti­ple pairs of dark shades, specif­i­cal­ly describ­ing it as some­thing akin to a super­pow­er. “I used to think, ‘How the hell can she draw in a dark club?’ But she could. Lat­er down the line I real­ized she had a gift.” Brick­nall said.

Over the fol­low­ing decades Brock­le­hurst became enmeshed in the inven­tive fetish under­ground that blos­somed in Lon­don dur­ing the 1990s, fre­quent­ing nights such as Tor­ture Gar­den and the Skin Two Rub­ber Ball at Stal­lions in Soho, which served as a meet­ing point for exper­i­men­tal fash­ion, per­for­mance, and music that also attract­ed both estab­lished design­ers as well as bud­ding fash­ion stu­dents from Brock­le­hurst’s alma mater of Cen­tral Saint Mar­tins, who would come to debut their lat­est cre­ations on the dance floor, their extreme sil­hou­ettes danc­ing along­side devo­tees of leather and latex. She con­tin­ued to refuse to be pinned down by age or expec­ta­tion, guard­ing her­self through her per­sona, and often vis­it­ing togeth­er with Isabelle Brick­nall, now a full-time design­er, and her oth­er friend, anthro­pol­o­gist Ted Pol­he­mus.

Brock­le­hurst accom­pa­nied Brick­nall reg­u­lar­ly to under­ground gath­er­ings that, before becom­ing dilut­ed by pop­u­lar­i­ty, drew London’s most inven­tive fig­ures. As Brick­nall recalls, “Peo­ple were exper­i­ment­ing with clothes, music; there were per­form­ers like Empress Stah … and the likes of Leigh Bow­ery, Rachel Auburn, Thier­ry Mugler and Jean Paul Gaulti­er; they couldn’t get enough of it! Jo would float around with her sketch­pads and her crayons and draw all the char­ac­ters there, from the sub­lime to the ridicu­lous… and I mean ridicu­lous! Of course she had her dark glass­es and her blonde wig, which act­ed as a sort of bar­ri­er, as she didn’t want peo­ple to engage with her, although if some­one did both­er her she’d just raise an eye­brow and speak in her posh, Joan­na-Lum­ley-like voice, which meant it was time to sod off. It would often be my job to go off and find out who it was she’d actu­al­ly drawn.”

Isabelle Brick­nall, depict­ed by Brock­le­hurst dur­ing this peri­od as the “Rub­ber Angel,” had also shown off her work at the clubs. As one of her works, she designed futur­is­tic steel body armour with her boyfriend at the time, met­al­work­er Antho­ny Gre­go­ry, as ‘pro­tec­tion’ for women out on nights in the scene. Each piece was made specif­i­cal­ly with its intend­ed wear­er in mind, a group com­posed of cre­atives whose work spanned design, dance, and music.

Brock­le­hurst asked Brick­nall to mod­el the works and pro­duced lumi­nous draw­ings of her and oth­er club-goers in the armor using reflec­tive neons and metal­lic inks, includ­ing a par­tic­u­lar shade of pink so harsh that she insist­ed male artists were anx­ious to employ in their own work, trans­form­ing her sub­jects into fig­ures oth­ers have com­pared to clas­sic com­ic book super­heroes. She was espe­cial­ly proud of her por­traits of women, insist­ing, “I regard myself as a fem­i­nist and for this rea­son I have been very con­cerned to paint women to appear strong and con­fi­dent.” In anoth­er moment she has spo­ken about her female por­traits: “My women have an aura about them that puts them on the plane of a god­dess,” speak­ing in such reli­giouis terms was no acci­dent of speech.

While sel­dom dis­cussed to any­one, Brock­le­hurst’s work also main­tained a spir­i­tu­al dimen­sion. Brick­nall recalled watch­ing her begin draw­ings in vibrant col­or while wear­ing dark glass­es; when asked how she worked so intu­itive­ly, Brock­le­hurst explained that “she saw auras around peo­ple. On the fetish scene, she saw peo­ple as either angel­ic or demon­ic, and she’d rep­re­sent that.” This sug­gest­ed her work was always about reach­ing the deep­est lev­els of an indi­vid­ual, and pre­sent­ing the sub­ject in their truest form.

The “Rub­ber Angel” and the armor she designed appeared at club events and at the Min­istry of Sound for the launch of Wired mag­a­zine, accom­pa­nied by Brocklehurst’s paint­ings as part of a dig­i­tal exper­i­men­tal pre­sen­ta­tion. Brick­nall recalled wear­ing the first piece to the 1992 Skin Two Rub­ber Ball, admir­ers rushed for­ward assum­ing it was plas­tic, only to dis­cov­er cold steel beneath their hands, a shock that became woven into the night’s the­atri­cal awe.

Her engage­ment with the scene cul­mi­nat­ed in wider insti­tu­tion­al recog­ni­tion. In 1994 the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um includ­ed a series of her fig­ure draw­ings in Street Style, acknowl­edg­ing the cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance of sub­cul­tur­al dress and per­for­mance. By then she was spend­ing increas­ing amounts of time in Europe, par­tic­u­lar­ly Ams­ter­dam and Berlin, con­tin­u­ing to car­ry her sketch­books through any new clubs and night venues she could find where fash­ion, rit­u­al, and per­for­mance con­verged. Across these noc­tur­nal stud­ies runs a con­sis­tent vision: fig­ures ren­dered with lumi­nous inten­si­ty, sus­pend­ed between sacred icon and under­ground arche­type, their bod­ies armored, adorned, and reimag­ined as vehi­cles of pow­er and self-inven­tion.

As London’s fetish under­ground matured, its visu­al lan­guage began migrat­ing into the main­stream. By the late 1980s and ear­ly 1990s, the run­ways were echo­ing the club floor: corsetry, rub­ber, metal­lic fin­ish­es, and fetish sil­hou­ettes appeared in the col­lec­tions of Jean Paul Gaulti­er and Thier­ry Mugler, con­firm­ing that what had once been cod­ed, noc­tur­nal, and sub­cul­tur­al now pos­sessed com­mer­cial and aes­thet­ic pow­er. Brock­le­hurst, a mem­ber of the indus­try her­self, once again turned her atten­tion to the broad­er fash­ion world as well.

From the late 1990s onward, her con­nec­tion to fash­ion edu­ca­tion deep­ened through her friend­ship with Howard Tangye, then head of wom­enswear at Cen­tral Saint Mar­tins. Tangye invit­ed her to teach life draw­ing to his stu­dents, intro­duc­ing a gen­er­a­tion of young design­ers to her uncom­pro­mis­ing eye and empha­sis on ges­ture, pres­ence, and char­ac­ter. In his Hornsey home stu­dio, Brock­le­hurst’s works report­ed­ly hang beside his own. “She’d had a lot of hard bumps,” He recalls, “She wasn’t quite the pure Eng­lish rose, and I think she copped quite a bit of prej­u­dice.” He echoed oth­er peo­ple in that she “extreme­ly beau­ti­ful, mes­mer­iz­ing, but incred­i­bly self-con­scious about it. She would do any­thing to make her­self not beau­ti­ful.” Though she had rela­tion­ships, she nev­er mar­ried, and lat­er expressed regret at not hav­ing chil­dren. Teach­ing, how­ev­er, suit­ed her. Stu­dents respond­ed to her inten­si­ty and clar­i­ty of vision, accord­ing to Tangye.

Despite her grow­ing influ­ence, she remained immune to fame. Brick­nall recalled “[every­one] would try and jump in front of her and get their pic­ture drawn in the clubs. Even with the fol­low­ing gen­er­a­tions, peo­ple like Alexan­der McQueen and John Gal­liano, who were around when Jo was a sep­tu­a­ge­nar­i­an. She became one of fashion’s best-kept secrets. If you were real­ly hip and hap­pen­ing, Jo would draw you.” Iron­i­cal­ly, she rarely knew who her sub­jects were; iden­ti­fi­ca­tion was often left to Brick­nall or oth­er friends.

Brock­le­hurst’s con­tin­ued time in con­ti­nen­tal Europe led her to find a more recep­tive audi­ence. “If you’re going to suc­ceed in the arts in any shape or form, some­times going abroad is eas­i­er, because you’re an unknown quan­ti­ty and you’re cel­e­brat­ed much more than in your coun­try of ori­gin,” Brick­nall observed. Accord­ing to her, Brock­le­hurst rel­ished Berlin’s atmos­phere before the fall of the Wall, which she con­sid­ered punk in spir­it. In Ger­many and Poland she was wide­ly rec­og­nized at arts fes­ti­vals even as she remained obscure at home. She devel­oped very close friend­ships with­in Berlin’s avant-garde cir­cles, “some real­ly out there types of peo­ple.” accord­ing to Brick­nall, and immersed her­self in the­atre, per­for­mance, and nightlife.

Her rela­tion­ship with the city cul­mi­nat­ed in work for Berlin­er Zeitung, where she served as artist-in-res­i­dence dur­ing the 1999 Berlin­er The­atertr­e­f­fen. The news­pa­per sought to revive a Weimar-era tra­di­tion in which the­atre reviews were accom­pa­nied by illus­tra­tions rather than pho­tographs. Each evening Brock­le­hurst attend­ed pre­mieres, sketch­ing from her seat in the dark as actors moved across the stage. She then worked through the night pro­duc­ing large, vivid­ly col­ored draw­ings, vis­i­bly recall­ing the visu­al lan­guage of clas­sic expres­sion­ism, often up to A1 in size. She would then wake up to her works on the news­stands the next morn­ing, print­ed along­side reviews. Some images, includ­ing a macabre ren­der­ing of a pro­duc­tion of Maria Lazar’s Die Einge­borene (The Natives), a sur­re­al fusion of live the­atre and pup­petry, nev­er made it to print but sur­vives as evi­dence of her noc­tur­nal dis­ci­pline and expres­sive reach.

Brock­le­hurst excelled at cap­tur­ing the body in motion. Beyond Berlin she doc­u­ment­ed bal­let and the­atre across Europe, from Poland to Turin, dis­till­ing ges­ture, ten­sion, and rhythm into elec­tric line and col­or. Whether in a fetish club or a the­atre pre­miere hours lat­er, she pur­sued the same objec­tive: to seize move­ment at the instant it becomes char­ac­ter, and to ren­der bod­ies not as sta­t­ic forms but as charged pres­ences.

Toward the end of her life, Brock­le­hurst began turn­ing her house at West­bere Road into a kind of pri­vate muse­um, fill­ing the rooms with her own work and arrang­ing it as an immer­sive envi­ron­ment rather than a sta­t­ic archive. Although she owned the prop­er­ty and was not in a des­per­ate posi­tion finan­cial­ly, she lived with strik­ing fru­gal­i­ty, giv­ing freely to friends while using min­i­mal heat­ing and han­dling repairs on her own. Howard Tangye recalls one such moment: “Once, she’d built a lit­tle extra bit on to the back of the house, and there was a huge hole in the roof. When it rained it was like some­one had a show­er in there. I bought this big tar­pau­lin and we secured it on the roof, to at least keep out the water. She wasn’t both­ered about it. I was up there and we were try­ing to fix this tar­pau­lin, and this great wind blew up. We had enor­mous fun try­ing to fix this thing on the roof. Then I con­vinced her—I said, ‘Jo, I want to buy a cou­ple of your draw­ings.’ I bought two of her draw­ings, and with the mon­ey she got the roof fixed.” Sav­ing mon­ey, he not­ed, was nev­er the point of her life.

In her lat­er years she devel­oped a qui­et devo­tion to land­scape, fold­ing it into her life­long sec­ondary pas­sion of phys­i­cal fit­ness by cycling reg­u­lar­ly to Hamp­stead Heath. In all weath­ers she walked and sketched there, treat­ing the heath as her coun­try­side despite being, at heart, a city per­son. These works are strik­ing­ly dif­fer­ent from her large, kinet­ic punk por­traits: small in scale, atmos­pher­ic, and restrained, they trade elec­tric line for mood and air. She con­tin­ued the rit­u­al until the cold final­ly drove her indoors.

Between 2000 and 2002, after return­ing from an extend­ed stay in New York, she embarked on a vast, evolv­ing body of work that was part­ly an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal reflec­tion of her club years and part Vic­to­ri­an fever dream. The walls of her home were crowd­ed with vivid fig­ures drawn from Alice Through the Look­ing-Glass, though each char­ac­ter bore the unmis­tak­able imprint of the fetish club. Fas­ci­nat­ed by Charles Dodgson’s alter ego Lewis Car­roll, she titled the project Brock­le­hurst Through the Look­ing Glass. The stri­dent, elec­tric draw­ings con­trast­ed sharply with the lace table­cloths, fine chi­na, and del­i­cate after­noon teas she was known to serve to vis­i­tors through­out her life, stag­ing a col­li­sion between Vic­to­ri­an gen­til­i­ty and noc­tur­nal sub­cul­ture.

She had long been inter­est­ed in reveal­ing the fem­i­nine with­in the mas­cu­line and the mas­cu­line with­in the fem­i­nine, an idea that once struck many as eccen­tric. She encour­aged sit­ters to play dress-up, and the Alice series pushed this flu­id­i­ty fur­ther, blend­ing gen­der codes through cos­tume and pos­ture. Her deep knowl­edge of dress and anato­my allowed her to por­tray women as fear­less rather than pas­sive, charged with pres­ence rather than orna­ment. In her stu­dio, draw­ings were set in frames inlaid with bright plas­tic gem­stones and hung across every avail­able sur­face, cre­at­ing a the­atri­cal set­ting for tea gath­er­ings that felt part salon, part dream sequence. Around the same peri­od she spent time on the south coast with a cousin, pro­duc­ing a hand­ful of unchar­ac­ter­is­tic seascapes that quite lit­er­al­ly shim­mered, as their sur­faces were dust­ed with glit­ter, a lin­ger­ing sliv­er of glam from her days at the clubs.

As part of her final major work, she placed an image of her­self as a child at its cen­ter as it expand­ed out­ward into hun­dreds of draw­ings reimag­in­ing Carroll’s char­ac­ters. The rest of the sub­jects were devot­ed club-goers dressed in hybrid Vic­to­ri­an and fetish attire, col­laps­ing time peri­ods and social codes into a sin­gle visu­al lan­guage. The project func­tioned as self-por­trait, cul­tur­al archive, and myth­mak­ing exer­cise all at once: a late-life syn­the­sis in which child­hood mem­o­ry, under­ground nightlife, gen­der play, and Eng­lish lit­er­ary tra­di­tion coex­ist­ed under one roof on a qui­et North Lon­don street. The work took the form of an instal­la­tion inside her own stu­dio, a delib­er­ate­ly ambigu­ous Vic­to­ri­an draw­ing room that staged a dia­logue between restraint and excess, pro­pri­ety and sub­cul­ture, iron­i­cal­ly pre­sent­ed in one of her most inner­most and per­son­al spaces, as if a qui­et release of open­ness after a life­time of pro­nounced secre­cy. Friends who expe­ri­enced it under­stood it as a cul­mi­na­tion of her sen­si­bil­i­ty, and there remains a qui­et hope that it might one day be seen beyond that inti­mate cir­cle.

Jo Brock­le­hurst died on August 6, 2006, leav­ing behind a body of work that feels insep­a­ra­ble from the shad­owed inte­ri­ors and noc­tur­nal worlds she inhab­it­ed. There is still much about her life that has not been uncov­ered, if it ever will be. If her life was care­ful­ly veiled, her draw­ings were any­thing but: they pos­sess a clar­i­ty bor­der­ing on the inter­rog­a­tive. Even such details as the text on shirts and but­tons would be pre­served, unashamed­ly polit­i­cal in nature such as “Amer­i­can Indi­ans died so you can eat ham­burg­ers” and “lovers of the world unite! awak­en the seeds of con­fu­sion. we are the minds agi­ta­tors”. Oth­er times, signs of the cul­ture were includ­ed, with ref­er­ences to bands of the time includ­ing Bauhaus, Japan, The Damned, Men­ace, Sex Pis­tols, Ado­les­cents, Blink 182, and Be Bop Deluxe.

Those who knew her describe a woman of con­tra­dic­tions: socia­ble yet pri­vate, impe­ri­ous yet ten­der, glam­orous yet deeply mod­est. Jack­ie Athram remem­bered her as “an orig­i­nal” who loved danc­ing and par­ties but reserved her deep­est devo­tion for work. Though she was reserved, Athram says even­tu­al­ly “she lost her shy­ness and, while remain­ing a pri­vate per­son, she blos­somed as her artis­tic abil­i­ty devel­oped and she cre­at­ed her own charmed world. As a friend she was loy­al and car­ing. She could be as impe­ri­ous as a war­rior queen, pas­sion­ate in argu­ment, but there was a strain of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to her, and above all she had a ten­der, gen­tle and gen­er­ous heart.” Friends have sug­gest­ed she felt kin­ship with out­siders because she her­self was treat­ed as one ear­ly on in life. Despite her strik­ing nat­ur­al looks, she con­tin­ued to wear her dis­guis­es for most of her life, almost always includ­ing a blonde wig and sun­glass­es, like­ly as a form of retreat, hav­ing nev­er recov­ered from the ini­tial expe­ri­ence of being seen in such an exclu­sion­ary way.

Oth­ers knew her as a teacher that was exact­ing but trans­for­ma­tive. At Cen­tral Saint Mar­tins, she demand­ed dis­ci­pline and seri­ous­ness from stu­dents and mod­els alike, yet her gen­eros­i­ty and encour­age­ment left a last­ing imprint. She insist­ed that black was not a col­or until one had learned to draw, urg­ing stu­dents to under­stand struc­ture and chro­mat­ic force before rely­ing on dark­ness. She spoke obses­sive­ly about col­or the­o­ry and favored Elsa Schiaparelli’s “shock­ing pink,” a hue she con­sid­ered aggres­sive, elec­tric, and odd­ly gen­dered. Even in her own line work she lay­ered tones before intro­duc­ing black at the very end. “Jo Brock­le­hurst was a tough taskmas­ter and I would often have to warn the mod­els of her expec­ta­tions. We lost a few, but all said after­wards they were glad to have had the expe­ri­ence and the results that had come out of it.” recalled Tangye, writ­ing her obit­u­ary.

Nav­i­gat­ing the art world as a woman required strat­e­gy and defi­ance. She short­ened her name so deal­ers assumed she was an assis­tant to “Joe” rather than the artist him­self, a mis­un­der­stand­ing that amused her. Her draw­ings of men were thread­ed with pri­vate jokes and psy­cho­log­i­cal obser­va­tions, skew­er­ing van­i­ty and self-regard with qui­et pre­ci­sion. One exam­ple came in the form of a por­trait of Iggy, a male room­mate of Brick­nal­l’s, who she described as “a real trol­lop but very charis­mat­ic.” The por­trait ulti­mate­ly shows him look­ing at his own reflec­tion in a mir­ror – “a clas­sic nar­cis­sist.”

Her looks also meant that she need­ed to have the strength to turn down unwant­ed atten­tion. “She was gor­geous, which meant men were always try­ing to jump on her bones and she had to bat them off.” recalls Brick­nall. Beyond admir­ers and their advances, Brock­le­hurst’s strength extend­ed to a life­long resis­tance to prej­u­dice and expec­ta­tions, all of which she deflect­ed while con­struct­ing a self-con­tained world gov­erned by her own rules. “I often thought she lived in a kind of won­der­ment of the world, in anoth­er dimen­sion — it was nat­ur­al for her and we all looked on slight­ly stunned and just going along for the ride.” Tangye writes.

Since her death, Jo Brocklehurst’s work has rarely been seen. In Britain and around the world, much of her career remains strange­ly under-doc­u­ment­ed. Most of her work resides in pri­vate hands: friends’ homes, garages, and scat­tered col­lec­tions, while ongo­ing own­er­ship dis­putes and the absence of insti­tu­tion­al archiv­ing have left gaps in the record. Only a small num­ber of pieces entered pub­lic col­lec­tions, includ­ing hold­ings at London’s Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um, while most of the draw­ings remain with sur­viv­ing mem­bers of her fam­i­ly. Her indif­fer­ence to the expec­ta­tions of the art mar­ket meant she sold lit­tle dur­ing her life­time, despite the sheer size of her out­put. Olivia Ahmad has not­ed that Brock­le­hurst was “incred­i­bly pro­lif­ic,” and that a por­tion of the work is thought to be miss­ing, adding a lay­er of mys­tery to an already elu­sive lega­cy. Even the lim­it­ed mate­r­i­al exhib­it­ed so far sug­gests a vast, still-unmapped archive and stands as a unique drawn record of punk from a vivid, per­son­al, and dis­tinct­ly female per­spec­tive.

Her wiry, flu­id line has often invit­ed com­par­i­son to Egon Schiele, yet despite her work trac­ing a lin­eage to ear­ly expres­sion­ism, the resem­blance is large­ly tech­ni­cal. Where­as Schiele’s fig­ures can feel intense or self-aggran­diz­ing, Brocklehurst’s sub­jects are grant­ed dig­ni­ty with­out spec­ta­cle. Her con­tort­ed pos­es, the­atri­cal ges­tures, and lumi­nous, arrest­ing eyes serve obser­va­tion rather than ego. In spir­it she aligns more close­ly with doc­u­men­tary artists such as Diane Arbus or Mary Ellen Mark, and with the qui­et, posthu­mous­ly dis­cov­ered prac­tice of Vivian Maier: artists who placed their sub­jects first and them­selves sec­ond, attend­ing to those who lived beyond the mar­gins of polite soci­ety, and spar­ing no time for their own rep­u­ta­tion in life.

Friends recall her admi­ra­tion for women of con­vic­tion such as Leono­ra Car­ring­ton and Fri­da Kahlo, fig­ures who stepped out­side pre­scribed roles set for women. “She was aware of the impor­tance of her gen­der in being a doc­u­men­tary artist, because there’s a cer­tain trust afford­ed to women that means they can go places men can’t. Even though she could be quite an intim­i­dat­ing pres­ence – fab­u­lous look­ing and a lady of mys­tery – peo­ple were drawn to her like a mag­net.” Brick­nall says. She aban­doned a promis­ing career in fash­ion illus­tra­tion to pur­sue an uncom­pro­mis­ing project: doc­u­ment­ing those who val­ued free­dom over respectabil­i­ty, just as she did. On paper, her sub­jects radi­ate free­dom: indi­vid­u­als unapolo­get­i­cal­ly them­selves.

Isabelle Brick­nall described her as “the real deal,” draw­ing every day of her life with no con­cern for mon­ey or insti­tu­tion­al approval. “The art estab­lish­ment at that time wouldn’t have touched punks with a ten-foot barge­pole, but she saw some­thing there. She was ahead of her time.” accord­ing to Brick­nall. The draw­ings also func­tion as a cor­rec­tive to the famil­iar black-and-white pho­tog­ra­phy of punk’s ear­ly years. Brock­le­hurst saw the scene in puls­ing col­or, punc­tu­at­ed by unde­ni­ably human qual­i­ties of flushed cheeks, bulging veins. By iso­lat­ing her fig­ures from the chaos of clubs and squats and pre­sent­ed them to the view­er in front of a plain white back­ground, she grants them seduc­tive sub­jec­tiv­i­ty, leav­ing view­ers to con­struct their own nar­ra­tives for these strange, com­pelling char­ac­ters.

Her out­put was vast and inter­na­tion­al­ly exhib­it­ed, span­ning Ger­many, New York, Ams­ter­dam, and Lon­don. She exper­i­ment­ed con­stant­ly with col­or, move­ment, per­for­mance, and social envi­ron­ment, pro­duc­ing draw­ings that feel imme­di­ate, uncom­pro­mis­ing, and unmis­tak­ably her own. The line nev­er slack­ened; the dis­ci­pline of draw­ing dai­ly kept it alive. Whether by cir­cum­stances of birth and sur­round­ings or sole­ly through her incli­na­tion, she remained an out­sider with­in the art world, and one sens­es she pre­ferred it that way, per­haps even now.