Isabella Covert

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 reproductive rights in America, and the internal sensibility of feeling inside oneself. She has shown in group exhibitions in galleries across the US including Chicago, Illinois, Laguna Beach, California, Cincinnati, Ohio, and New York. Covert currently lives and works in Savannah, GA.

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 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 in the overwhelm of the Information Age. 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. 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 abject, tactile, fleshy masses that resemble human innards and muscle. Pushing the boundary of abjection and commenting on the contentious state of censorship of vaginal images, the vibrant color palettes ooze with the visceral nature of both mental and politically allegorical maiming of people with vulvas.This work references 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.

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