'Rush Hour', 2026. Acrylic on canvas. 240 x 180 cm. Image: Sienna Ponting
Bio
Sienna Ponting's practice explores the social dynamics of looking, focusing on the male gaze and its presence within everyday public space. Through painting, she examines moments of tension, visibility, and resistance between male and female figures, drawing from real-life experience, sourced imagery, and imagined environments. Working intuitively with saturated colour and gestural mark-making, Sienna creates psychologically charged scenes that sit between the familiar and the surreal. The women within her work are not passive subjects but active presences—returning gazes, confronting intrusion, or resisting visibility on their own terms. Through these works, Sienna reimagines moments of catcalling and public harassment that are frequently dismissed or shrugged off, exposing the ways in which such behaviours have become normalised within everyday life.
Selected works
'Honk Honk', 2026. Acrylic on canvas. 100 x 80 cm.
'Across the street', 2026. Acrylic on canvas. 70 x 50 cm.
'Red Pill Rage', 2026. Acrylic on canvas. 70 x 50 cm.
'That's a loud one', 2026. Acrylic on canvas. 100 x 80 cm.
'The Man-Spreader', 2026. Acrylic on canvas. 70 x 50 cm.
'Eye Line', 2026. Acrylic on canvas. 70 x 50 cm.
'Rush Hour'. Installation view. Acrylic on canvas. 240 x 180 cm
Graduate Show
About The Artist
Sienna Ponting (b. 2004, Cumbria) is a contemporary painter born and raised in the Lake District, now based in Scotland, whose psychologically charged paintings explore the darker social dynamics of city life, the male gaze, and female presence within public space.
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