British artist and filmmaker Lórien Haynes moves between disciplines with rare authority. Internationally recognised for her monumental charcoal nudes — works that command space through scale, tactility and psychological intensity – Haynes has built a practice in which drawing, performance and activism are inseparable. Her figures, constructed across taped sheets of paper with seams deliberately exposed, feel both architectural and autobiographical. They do not simply depict the body; they interrogate it.
Trained under Royal Academy tutor Dilip Ur and later developing her practice in Los Angeles with painter George Small, Haynes brings classical draughtsmanship into dialogue with an uncompromising contemporary sensibility. Her work has been exhibited at The Haymarket in London, acquired by Saatchi Gallery, and featured in Every Secret Thing directed by Amy Berg. Across paper, stage and screen, she explores exposure, power, vulnerability and strength with visceral clarity.
Yet Haynes’ creative language extends far beyond the studio wall. An award-winning actor, writer and director, her first play Good Grief was selected for the NYSAF Powerhouse Summer Program, directed by John Slattery, before being produced virtually starring Sian Clifford and Nikesh Patel. Described by The Guardian as ‘an impressively naturalistic bereavement story’ and a ‘tender film-play hybrid’, its screen adaptation became a semi-finalist for the Academy Nicholl Fellowship.
Her debut feature, Everything I Ever Wanted to Tell My Daughter About Men, won Best Independent Film at the Cannes Independent Film Festival and at the Palm Springs International Film Awards, earning Haynes Best Actress awards from the New York Independent Film Awards and the London Independent Film Awards. As a live production, it was staged at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts and at Sam Wanamaker Playhouse as a fundraiser for survivors of sexual violence.
Activism is not an adjunct to Haynes’ work; it is its engine. Since her early work with Amnesty International, she has positioned art as a vehicle for service. From producing Punched at the Criterion Theatre during the pandemic, to creating work supporting the UN’s 16 Days to End Gender-Based Violence campaign, her projects consistently seek to move the needle forward – with humour, with honesty, with emotional truth. She also serves as an ambassador for Refuge.
Her latest play, Shakespeare’s Women, directed by Jude Kelly, has been performed at Shakespeare’s Globe and workshopped at The Public Theater. She is currently preparing to direct her second feature, The Lift, produced by Claude Dal Farra, known for To Leslie, with the screenplay already awarded at the Paris Independent Film Festival.
Haynes continues her studies at The Jocelyn Jones Studio and at Royal Drawing School, sustaining an interdisciplinary practice in which drawing, performance and narrative inquiry inform one another.
In conversation with The Flux Review, she speaks with disarming candour about scale, fragmentation and freedom – about refusing idealisation, resisting commercial pressure and protecting the anonymity and strength of the women she draws. She reflects on movement, immersion and the necessity of evolution, revealing why the body monumental, unfinished and unapologetically real – remains the enduring centre of her practice.
Your oversized charcoal nudes are immediately arresting in scale. What draws you to working monumentally rather than at a more intimate size?
It was an accident. I started drawing life size and this simply didn’t fit on one sheet of paper – so I had to keep adding sheets to my work and it expanded exponentially. I began to feel that slightly larger than life size, made these figure-drawings represent real women and their power. I wanted them to be confrontational, Amazonian. The scale felt like a natural and essential expression of the landscape, size and scale of the female body.
You construct your works across multiple sheets of paper, leaving the tape visible. What does this fragmentation add to the presence of the figure?
I love the fact you can’t fit a woman onto one page. And that she is built into a really substantial body. The tape has become symbolic of our fragmentation as humans and how we are all holding ourselves together somehow. I had an exhibition called Pieces of a Woman because each drawing is in pieces and that also expressed the multi layered nature of femininity.
Charcoal is both delicate and unforgiving. What does this medium allow you to express that paint might not?
You can move charcoal with your fingertips in a way you can’t use paint. You can sculpt it on the page. And when mixed with pastel, charcoal gives a three-dimensional feel to the work that is fluid and unfixed – paint often feels so definite. I like the strength of the black line too and the monochrome – and I don’t think there is such a thing as a mistake. So as far as being ‘unforgiving’ – I try to move through that and see what happens.
Having trained under Dilip Ur and later worked with George Small in Los Angeles, how did those formative influences shape your approach to the figure?
Dilip is about deconstructing any preconceived ideas of right and wrong and using your work as pure expression. He wants you to undo everything you have ever learned. Everything you can do and reach further than that into how you feel. You draw with your left hand. You draw with your eyes closed. You draw moving figures. Then George was the one who encouraged me to go big. And really challenge myself with scale. He gathered the most extraordinary group of women artists in is classes – they were intelligent and political and our time together with him was so much more than art. They were an incredible community.
Your work balances classical figurative tradition with a contemporary rawness. How conscious are you of that dialogue between past and present?
I’m not really that conscious. I admire the classical figurative tradition hugely – and I think so many artists work from that and then express themselves into their time period. Much of art emerges out of that training. From Da Vinci to Egon Schiele to Tracy Emin.
There is a strong sense of vulnerability within your nudes. How do you approach depicting the body without idealisation?
It’s SO important not to idealise. I want to draw women as they are – not how they/we are expected to be. And to find the beauty and strength in each person; what comes out of the body – the sense of who that person is inside. And that is apparent when any woman models. How she moves. Her facial expressions. However I don’t draw the face. I want the woman to retain her anonymity – I think that helps prevent objectification. And it’s not portraiture of the face that I do – it’s portraiture of the body.
Your solo exhibitions in Los Angeles marked significant milestones. Did any one of them represent a turning point in your career?
It was easier for me to work and to sell my work in LA because people’s homes are modern – with maximal wall space. Homes are built on a different scale and template there. It’s not a question of wealth, but design. And on the whole – I have to say – people embrace new work and new artists in a different way in LA. It’s more inclusive and there is less – to be honest – snobbery. Or the need to ‘fit in’ with fashion, trends, the ‘right’ people. So to have shows with enough wall space to exhibit the work and people who could fit the work into their homes, made exhibiting a different experience.
Your work was featured in Amy Berg’s film Every Secret Thing. How did seeing your art within a cinematic context alter your perception of it?
It was funny more than anything. Diane Lane – who played the artist – came over and selected the work she felt her character would have drawn. (I kept staring at her thinking ‘I was in love with you in Rumblefish.’)And then they took the work away and designed a studio for her. This mean reproducing the work in all sorts of shapes and sizes it wasn’t – so what I ended up seeing was not representative of the work itself. And I was curious and it was a bit weird, interesting and as I said ‘funny.’ I was very grateful to Amy for asking me to contribute.
With collectors ranging from corporate to celebrity, has the scale of your client base influenced the direction of your work?
No. I feel so happy if anyone loves the work and wants to live with it. I always feel thrilled when people send me pictures of work in their homes and it’s a special feeling to know someone sees that every day. It’s an honour really. But I’m hopeless in a commercial sense because I draw what I draw and want to draw and if it sells great, but I can’t work to sell it. I don’t understand the logic of selling anyway. People sometimes call me years after seeing a piece and say ‘is it still there? I can’t stop thinking about it.’ I find commissions incredibly hard too as I’m drawing to order and I don’t like the pressure of getting it ‘wrong.’ It goes against freedom of expression. I also find it hard being at my own shows because the work is done and people will either like it or they won’t and I don’t want opinion to affect my desire or confidence to sit back down at the drawing board. I think you do the work and keep moving forward. If you wait to get reviewed, or for judgement you might never work again.
Your career spans drawing, acting and screenwriting. How does performance inform the way you approach the body in your charcoal works?
I was a dancer and my mother is a choreographer, so I would say dance and movement inform my art work most. I deeply appreciate that it is a right brain activity during which I completely lose track of time. And the same is true of acting. Which is the only other thing that enables me to escape thought. Drawing and acting are immediate and all consuming in the moment. You cannot be anywhere else. I love that.
Having written and produced for film and theatre, including Everything I Ever Wanted To Tell My Daughter About Men and Shakespeare’s Women, do you see narrative structure influencing the way you construct visual compositions?
What beginning, middle and end? I would say no. The commonality is that nothing ever feels finished. It can always be better, or different, or another interpretation. With drawing however it is often about not overworking it. Allowing it to exist before you go back in and stepping back and looking and saying have you captured something without capturing everything. Writing is much more structured and left brain and a slog of drafts and drafts and drafts and rewrites and rewrites and rewrites. And then sometimes you find the first version was the best. But the process is different.
Looking ahead, do you see your practice expanding beyond charcoal into new materials or dimensions?
Yes. Don’t ask me what yet but yes. I have to evolve.
You can currently view Lórien‘s work at Zebra One Gallery in Hamsptead, London zebraonegallery
For more information visit Lorien Haynes’s website and Instagram lorien_haynes