​
Isabella Covert is a painter born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 2001. She received a BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2023 and is currently a MFA graduate student and Graduate Fellowship recipient at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Covert’s paintings comment on the mental complexities women experience due to the state of women’s rights and reproductive rights in America, and the internal sensibility of feeling inside oneself. She has shown in group exhibitions both virtually and in person in galleries across the US including Chicago, Illinois, Laguna Beach, California, Cincinnati, Ohio, and New York. Covert currently lives and works in Savannah, GA.
Artist Statement
The internal sensibility of feeling inside oneself, and the opposite of feeling disconnected within the self is a repressed obstacle that races around the minds of many women and people who can become pregnant. These psychological portrait paintings and sculptures comment on the mental complexities of women living in Post-Roe V. Wade America. In this era of ineffable circumstance, this work sheds light on intricate anxieties experienced within our bodies.
This concept of sustained anxiety reflects the feeling of suppression and control as news of proposed legislation is occurring daily, yet currently lacking widespread broadcasting. These works expose mundane, yet ubiquitously relatable, vulnerable moments of insecurity, desire, discomfort, and humanness that describe what many women are feeling, but often ignore or are unable to describe. Set in the raw emotional space that bathrooms offer to women, these paintings reference the space of a wide range of emotions surrounding reproductive and overall health.
Urgently diffusing these complex emotions through impulsive, textured brushwork, these works become tactile, abject, fleshy masses that resemble human innards and muscle. Pushing the boundary of abjection and commenting on the state of censorship, the vibrant and uncomfortable color palettes ooze with brush strokes that express the visceral nature of emotion.
I reference the continuing history of the connotations between women’s emotional responses and hysteria, portraying visually stimulating imagery that is both disconcerting and deeply psychological. My work serves as a current zeitgeist for individuals identifying as women, showing personal narratives that speak to the greater collective.