Taken Breaths – An Artist Talk with Constance Regardsoe

“Taken Breaths” explores the layered intersection of personal experience, collective memory, and the visual language of trauma. In this intimate artist talk, Constance Regardsoe reflects on the influence of emotional and psychological pain in her practice, particularly through the lens of her paintings of water and the female figure.

Referencing the long history of sexual trauma as a subject in the western art canon—from Giambologna’s Abduction of a Sabine Woman to countless renditions of Susanna and the Elders—Constance unpacks the difference between depictions meant for consumption and those that emerge from lived experience.

Today, many women artists are reclaiming these narratives, using subtlety and symbolism to reframe trauma on their own terms. For Constance, the water that dominates her work becomes both sanctuary and metaphor—a space of transformation, distortion, clarity, and concealment. Her figures are often submerged, blurred, or vanishing, expressing what cannot always be spoken.

“I paint the body to be about more than just what it looks like, to be about what it means to live in it.” – Constance Regardsoe

Through personal stories, discussion of specific paintings, and audience dialogue, this talk offers a rare opportunity to hear how an emerging voice in British painting navigates vulnerability, healing, and resistance through her work.

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About Constance Regardsoe

Constance Regardsoe is a UK-based artist whose paintings investigate the experience of embodiment through water and movement. Her signature visual style—figures submerged in rippling pools—draws viewers into moments of tension, stillness, and ambiguity. Her work balances precision with the ephemeral, realism with the psychological, asking: what does it mean to exist in a body shaped by memory?

Constance studied English Literature before turning fully to painting, and brings a deeply narrative sensibility to her visual work. She has received accolades including the Bath Society of Artists Grand Prize and Young Artist Prize, and her paintings have been shown in exhibitions across the UK and internationally. Her practice continues to evolve as she explores themes of identity, trauma, gender, and the shifting boundaries between surface and depth.

Learn more at https://constanceregardsoe.com.