Raw’s champion for The Wick is AWITA co-founder and art adviser Sigrid Kirk, an early supporter of her work. “While Sappho is the foundation of lesbian literature we only have tantalising fragments of her poetry which contain words of deep and passionate love for other women. In the 1800s the poems of the celebrated poet Wu Tao were sung throughout China. Her work was open about physically taking pleasure in women as was Renée Vivien’s writing in 19th century France. I feel the continuation of this Sapphic spirit in Vanessa Raw’s work. Her unapologetic images of women loving each other are intensely sensuous. Women unfurled as petals, the paint slips and pours across the canvas. Vanessa can really paint. There is a synaesthetic nature to her painting. Entwined in enchanted hollows, largely in dappled light at dawn or dusk these women are not spied upon or the objects of a male gaze and it is this – a glorious celebration of female love – which feels, shockingly, radical.”

Drawing on her own experiences and nature as continued sources of inspiration to translate into her emotive paintings, stylistically Raw looks to painters like Peter Doig, Jennifer Packer, and Michael Armitage – who all share a dreamlike, deeply psychological and evocative use of brushwork and colour, depicting scenes that depart from reality and reach towards a transcendental space of the subconscious. This fascination, Raw muses, perhaps stems from a love of reading psychology books – “after all my work is about connection, ultimately.”

This week, Raw unveils a mesmeric new suite of oil paintings at Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate. Titled On Earth We Weren’t Meant to Stay, the solo show runs from 30 June until 8 September 2024. Raw explains, “I have continued on from the work I presented at Frieze – which was about centering female sexuality, women as the subject rather than object, our connection with the landscape, and highlighting our connection with each other.” Raw has an intimate connection with the models. This new series takes the previous works even further, towards a “safe world, where I transform my own memories.”