Last modified on Mon 1 Mar 2021 09.07 EST
Looking at Vanessa Bairdâs gigantic pastel seas, her self-portraits and scenes of everyday life â some of them completed during lockdown in Oslo â part of me wants to run away. Grotesque, alarming, claustrophobic and often abject, Bairdâs watercolours, drawings and pastel works teeter between humour and malice, the confessional and the slapstick. Her first UK show at Londonâs Drawing Room, twice abandoned during the pandemic, goes live online today, and Baird will be showing at Glasgow Womenâs Library next year.
Rubislaw Girl, 2019, by Vanessa Baird. Photograph: Eva Herzog/courtesy the artist and OSL Contemporary