Charmaine Watkiss

Charmaine Watkiss was born in London to Jamaican parents, she lives and works in London. She completed her MA in Drawing at Wimbledon College of Art, 2018. Her work is concerned with what she calls ‘memory stories’. She creates narratives primarily through research connected to the African Caribbean diaspora, which is then mapped onto female figures. She draws herself only as a conduit to relay stories which speak about a collective experience; starting with a theme then allowing intuition and a dialogue with the work to take over. Her practice addresses themes including, ritual, tradition, ancestry, mythology and cosmology. Charmaine has recently shifted her gaze towards the natural world, investigating the herbal healing traditions of Caribbean women, especially those of her mothers generation, and connecting those traditions through colonisation back to their roots in Africa. The result of which was her first solo show in London, called The Seed Keepers.