Most Beautiful Girl, oil on canvas, 2010

A lot of Georgina Gratrix’s work is ugly, her major interests include bad painting, Paris Hilton, silly string, confetti, handbag-sized dogs, Francis Bacon, critical theory and pretty girls and boys. She also

really

likes painting. Georgina arrives at every party splattered in paint.

Back in the early 2000s I shared a studio with Georgina; a time filled with bear-shaped coffee mugs, disastrous flingings of bright yellow paint and a rather disturbing painting of my family dog’s head on top of some hot boy’s torso, next to the image of an almost naked Ms. Hilton clinging to her neurotic rat-dog being watched by a bunch of giant disembodied green eyes.

Over the last few years George’s subject matter has matured and diversified, and today this woman painter is astute cultural commentator, pop culture mistress and pillager of the hallowed history of painting.

Georgina Gratrix is a super-skilled, super-serious and often very funny painter -whether its wobbly eyes staring out of giant drippy paintings, looming figures with joke penis glasses, stripe paintings ripping off Picasso or grotesquely layered candy-coloured portraits, Georgina Gratrix is an artist unlike any other in South Africa.

Also, she was born in Mexico and used to own a monkey called Charlie.

LINDA STUPART