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Shani Rhys James is one of the most markable artists, her paintings are what she feels, she is expressing her feelings through drawing. Most of her paintings are about herself because she been through many things since she was a kid and that affect her, as we know her parents split up and she moved from Australia to the UK. Also, she paints other women, and her mother, and in my personal opinion she paints her mother because she had unstable relationship with her, and the other women it might be a reflection of the feminism because of that time the women were struggle, and they are just like they have no voice, and the world back then was male dominated so this the time for feminism. The wild wallpapers, anarchic floral bouquets, and gigantic mirrors, giving a sinister and claustrophobic air to the narratives what always show in her paintings. Shani always refused to give an explanation of her work that are narrative in nature, she never explains what it meant for her or how does she see things from her perspective. Shani Rhys James' captivating acres of painterly flush and blush would suffice if they were her only contribution to British art. But it's more than that, and let it remain so for a long time. Perhaps there is now a switch to be changed, and a chance to entertain the audience once more with new vistas. She possesses the tools that, for too long in traditional filmmaking, were as responsible for rendering the outdoors – an impasto version of Piper's grim romanticism, for example – as they were of exploring family disquiet.

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Even from a distance, while we understand the picture, let alone the style, certain paintings captivate us with their coloristic verve. Rhys James employs a lot of crimson, a deep solid red that is offset by deep solid blacks. She is simply captivated by light and its ability to make space real to us. This is not, of course, the dazzling light of the south, but rather what one would call a uniquely Welsh light, with drizzle and fog. None in this painter's art is blatant or devious, which is a very unusual difference. She presents the reality about a particular painter in a particular location with a specific background, without any romanticism. Nonetheless, we are continually pulled into contemplation on the enigma of universe and, deeper still, on the unexplained working of literature. It cannot be obtained by choice or even desire: labor, as well as talent, cannot produce a successful painting; but, without both, the impetus of imagination will fall pitifully short. Shani Rhys James objectively engages us in all of these productive complexities of life; she draws images that illustrate what musing lay beyond them. Without making arrogant and erroneous statements on her behalf. Rubens, the benevolent background to all this powerful and magnificent art, can still be felt.

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I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore.

Georgia O'Keeffe

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You do not even have to be a psychologist to see these photographs as a reinterpretation of 19th-century stereotypes about feminine psychology. Shani Rhys James plays with these ideas, as well as the concept of the repressed hysteric. Wife, mother, and homemaker are interspersed with the artist's empty vessel, the table rasa, who may articulate less appropriate feelings. The domestic face of femininity is replaced with a delicate, hollow self that relies on art to survive. Such double can be seen in nineteenth-century fiction, for instance, in the "nice," obedient Jane Eyre and her doppelganger, "crazy" Bertha Mason, hidden away in Rochester's attic, with her overly sexualised appearance and teasing chuckle.

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Stairs II - 1997

Rhys James' narrative paintings have a dramatic quality that reflects her upbringing: her mother was a stage actress. Many of her paintings resemble stage scenes, complete with dresses, scenery, and life-size mannequins. Stairs II is a part of my childhood memories of growing up in the theatre with family who are into performance and development. It is all about the child's parents being unavailable since they are obsessed with their own tasks, such as putting on shows. Rhys James' mother starred as Nora in Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House. The story is told by a nineteenth-century drama about a middle-class woman who grows upset with her husband's handling of her as if she were a doll.Women are portrayed in the play as helpless playthings stuck in the home in a patriarchal society.

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Stare – 1997

Rhys James turned inwards during the 2000s, painting tightly posed stark self-portraits in a collection dubbed 'Heads.' She calls these drawings "an experiment" in which she "used a hand-held mirror to break the face up as a landscape." Rhys James' family members feature in her paintings as well.

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Caught in the Mirror 1997

The self-portrait has been a recurrent theme since then. During the 1990s, the artist painted a series of self-portraits in her studio. In Captured in the Mirror, she is surrounded by her art supplies: paint tubes, palettes and water pots, brushes and used gloves. In the midst of this scuffle for space, she notices her reflection in an upright mirror. However, Mirrors have been used by male artists throughout history to draw on women's appearance, femininity, and vanity. Rhys James flips this convention on its back. She is using the mirror to show herself, not as an ideal of beauty, but as an artist asserting her personality. She remains amid the filth of the studio, dressed in paint-splattered overalls.

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Child and Lilies – 2016 Oil on linen

Alongside the flowers in some works are human heads, most commonly the distinctive red and round-cheeked portrait of Shani Rhys James herself, although in at least one instance, ‘Kid and Lilies,' it is not the adult woman but, as the title implies, a child. The girl stares up and out of the photo frame, curious and, maybe, terrified by anything unseen and unfamiliar to the viewer. The mass of white lilies with their tongue-like orange stamen shape nearly a full cloud over the upper half of the picture, crushing the small child into the bottom right corner, oppressing, and almost threatening to obliterate her.

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Black Cot& Late Glove – 1953

The absurdist juxtaposition of the cot and the single, fallen glove inside the nursery is sinister: 'it's about the relationship between the cot and the baby and the room; the baby's really behind bars,' says the artist. Rhys James discusses how he draws influence from art movement, such as Mona Hatoum's 'cots.' Hatoum creates sculptures out of everyday things, translating the familiar into the strange. In Incommunicado, she stripped a cot down to its raw, cold metal frame. The house is an eerie place of influence in both Hatoum's installations and Rhys James' drawings.

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Black Painting with Lilies

oil on linen 2015

A lady looks out from behind a large jug of flowers. Her face is tense, as if the slightest noise would send her scurrying back into the darkness. She seems to smell the air, her eyes staring from behind the blooming jungle like those of a fugitive rodent. Half of her face is blurred, whereas the other side is illuminated by an intangible source of light, appearing nervously from the raven blackness, as dark as Goya's Pinturas Negras, with their eerie themes of terror, dread, and hysteria.

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The Red Chair, W94. oil on canvas, 182.9 x 122 c

The same blue-clad child is there, steady on her thin black legs, sharing a room in the tenebrous sun with the beauty of the throne. It's a huge painting, with the window rectangle's beautifully painted silver-grey being by far the most stunning feature. Blank window, chair, child; ground and wall the most delicate bues of invisible rainbow: from these austere shapes, Rhys James produces something we will never be able to complete.

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Random Shani Rhys James painting:

Shani Rhys James, Oh for a Muse of Fire, 1994, oil on canvas. 182.8 x 243.8 c

This work exhibits an intriguing progression, a fresh note of dramatic suspense, and a broadening of implied narrative substance. Half clown, half Pierrot, the character pulls puppet-like against an impregnable black backdrop. The characters from the same interconnected series of paintings occupy its area: an empty white doublet, a child in brilliant blue, and a glorious platter. As always Shani offers no story and, in fact, rejects any plausible response. Such photographs occupy James's mind. The platter is central, the focus of more than one work, normally in close proximity to a representation of the artist herself, or at least her face. It's a glum, tense expression on her face, and her surrogate self, the kid, is similarly so.

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The ‘this inconstant stats’ exhibition has many of painting about herself, her mother, and as always she the narratives are given a sinister and claustrophobic feel by the use of wild wallpapers, anarchic floral bouquets, and massive mirrors.Shani fiction has also become more autobiographical, with imagination, complicated tableaux, and childhood scenes, and a plethora of heads. Moreover, the only factory missing from Rhys James' portraits is the cloudy sky beneath which her face seems irreversible. The term 'inconstancy' is often associated with volatile personal relationships.

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Head and Stairs, 2017

Signed and dated verso

Oil on gesso on board

18 1/8 x 18 1/8 in, 46 x 46 cm

A woman with a black hear and behind her stares. Shani refused to give an explanation of her work that are narrative in nature. However, the painting is a self-portrait implying exhaustion and submission

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Glass Vase and Head in Shadow, 2017

Oil on gesso on board

24 1/8 x 24 1/8 in, 61 x 61 cm

This painting encouraging everyone to look at the object rather than at her, a still-life in art forms that she has affectionately transformed into some kind of abstract sense.

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Blue Top Orange Hairband, 2017

Oil on gesso on board

24 1/8 x 24 1/8 in, 61 x 61 cm

might seem to imply that the unrelenting, full-on gaze is still around, if it is at all, mediated by the colour of a pure dress as well as an accessory.

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‘Boy and Bouquet – 2017’ Oil on linen

59 7/8 x 59 7/8 in, 152 x 152 cm

The vase in the background holds strong under this burst of colour and artistic design, poised on a small white band of white linen on the tabletop which serves mostly as counterpoint to the much larger black frame of quiet below. A small boy seems to be staring at the inferred spectator.