The Ghost Artist proposes a history of women’s art practice in which spectral embodiment replaces naturalistic body portrayals. In case studies of work by three artists, across three centuries, Self portrayal is traced on the edges of visibility, as it aesthetically resists unified body imagery and its inherently objectifying surface values. The artist-author’s own paintings wordlessly interrupt the flow of this analysis, forming aesthetic connections with both the written arguments, and the fictional tale of a woman artist negotiating her daily life, a narrative that is recorded in the margins of the text.

Janice McNab graduated from the Glasgow School of Art MFA in 1997, and her research-driven art practice has been widely exhibited. Teaching has always accompanied this work, and prior to the Royal Academy, she previously taught at Glasgow School of Art, The Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam, and Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam.