Mia Chaplin captures the complexities of womanhood, portraying it as a continuous struggle for autonomy and identity. Her figures, caught in perpetual motion, symbolise the ongoing tension between empowerment and restriction, self-ownership and societal imposition. The dichotomies imbued in the female experience are central to Chaplin’s work: “I wish to convey the freedom and joy of self-indulgence, confidence, and purity, juxtaposed against the constraints and expectations imposed on women.”

Thick impasto and gestural brushstrokes saturate Chaplin’s compositions with a raw, emotional intensity, emphasising the human body as a site of resistance - a battleground where power struggles are vividly enacted.

Chaplin follows an expressive, intuitive approach, which results in richly textured surfaces, where impasto marks, figures, still lives, and landscapes blur together. Inspired by the loose, evocative style of Impressionism, Chaplin’s compositions oscillate between voyeurism and intimacy. Figures appear intertwined, their limbs and torsos merging into fluid swathes of color, often indistinguishable from one another. Her approach draws on art historical references, conflating Romantic Exoticism with the hyper-feminine nudes of the Italian Renaissance.