Sleigh’s interest in reworking art historical movements, from the renaissance to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, is reflected in her explicit paintings of male nudes, which subvert the art historical tradition of a male gaze directed at a naked female body. In addition to her focus on gender, she painted individuals affectionately and honestly, often including normalising details such as body hair. In this way she implicitly critiqued the idealisation of the human body in art, aiming to combat its objectification. Sleigh’s female gaze still has a powerful impact and the formal qualities of her painting seem poignantly contemporary.
Reproduced without permission from the Tate Liverpool. You have to ask yourself whether Sleigh would have written this herself. I may be wrong but she probably “just painted”.