Mia Chaplin
Blue Lovers, 2020
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 89 × 79 cm
Joseph Clark Collection · JCC-0006
About the work
Blue Lovers brings intimacy into contact with the physical presence of oil paint. In Mia Chaplin’s practice, bodies and relationships emerge through surfaces that retain a sense of touch. The painting invites a close encounter with the tension between tenderness and material density, allowing the handling of paint to carry emotional weight alongside its subject. Made in 2020, it belongs to her continuing exploration of vulnerability and embodied experience.
About the artist
Mia Chaplin is a South African artist born in 1990. Working across painting and sculpture, she builds images through a physical handling of materials: thick oil paint, modelled surfaces and forms that retain the evidence of touch. Her practice considers intimacy, vulnerability and the experience of the female body.
Chaplin's figures often appear through dense, shifting passages of colour. Her sculptural work extends this interest in bodies and material presence beyond the picture surface. WHATIFTHEWORLD has presented her work in exhibitions and publications, including the 2020 presentation New Works and the 2024 catalogue The Light Between.