Liorah Tchiprout is a London-based artist whose paintings, prints and etchings feature figures that look human. However, rather than using living sitters for her portraits, Tchiprout constructs her own dolls and puppets—inspired by Yiddish theatre and pop culture—in her studio. They become her muses, and she dresses them, poses them and then captures their often dramatic, melancholic expressions.

Tchiprout’s debut art exhibition of works at Marlborough Gallery in London, Two Eyes Wide Open at the Edge of Dawn (​​until January 27, 2024), recently opened. STIR spoke to Tchiprout at her live-in workspace in Camden to talk about her work and her new show.

Tabish Khan: What can you tell us about how your latest series has evolved from your previous paintings and prints that often contained multiple figures interacting with one another in scenes that often felt like they had more obvious narratives?

Liorah Tchiprout: My two previous solo shows, both had titles from Yiddish poetry, linking to my Jewish heritage. So it felt right to continue in that vein and the title of this show Two Eyes Wide Open at the Edge of Dawn is from a poem by Yiddish poet Celia Dropkin.

The title also reflects that I am coming out of a dark time into a phase in my life that’s more hopeful. That's how it feels to me. I know there's always that balance in my work of the melancholy and the joyful, but this feels like a happier show than others.

The works in this show are a lot bigger, and that makes a huge difference to the experience of making them and how viewers engage with them. Unlike some of my previous works, they are nearly all singular portraits, so it’s more confrontational—instead of it being about a relationship between two sitters, it's a relationship between the viewer and the sitter.

Tabish: We have some of your dolls here in the studio, but where did this concept of using dolls as your muses come from?

Liorah: It started when I was studying fine art printmaking at Brighton University and you had to pick a module from a different department and one of them was puppet making. I'd always really loved dolls and puppets, and have fond memories of visiting the now-closed Theatre Museum that used to be in Covent Garden, London.

During that module I made some puppets and then I started drawing them. Before that, most of my source material was drawn from observation of real life. It felt completely natural to put the puppets on the table and work from them. The first puppets I made were based on some of the female characters from the novels of the Yiddish author Isaac Bashevis Singer. One is based on Princess Grace of Monaco and I also work elements of Disney princesses into the dolls.

I make new dolls regularly, so there are always new favourites, but then some do fall apart and break as well. The Rapunzel-type doll sitting on the chair is broken, so she can no longer stand and only sits, and that’s how she appears in the paintings in this exhibition.

The French film Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) was a big influence on this show as the protagonist has a very evocative red dress and that has found its way into some of my most recent paintings.

I also style them according to how I’d like to look and I started using little pieces of fabric to give the dolls neckerchiefs. Now I have started wearing neckerchiefs, they have become part of my look and I have got a collection of them in a case of life imitating art.

When you live around something and you are looking at them every day like I do with these dolls, they become a part of you. Likewise with my dog, a whippet called Fang, who has started appearing in my paintings after coming to live with me six months ago. There’s also a rich history of dogs in the history of art and you see so many alongside their owners in places such as the Wallace Collection, in the works of Dorothea Tanning and even Lucian Freud painted his dog, which happened to look a lot like mine. 

Tabish: The style of your paintings has resulted in comparisons with Paula Rego, especially now that you are working with a gallery that sells her prints. How do you feel about that and was she an influence?

Liorah: It’s a real compliment and a high accolade because she was amazing. There's an interesting sensibility that comes through in the work of women artists from very different cultural backgrounds, including Paula Rego and Marcelle Hanselaar, who are making these dark worlds drawing from women's experiences. It's a real honour to [consider that] maybe in 20 years, I’ll be able to look back and feel like I have contributed to that discussion.

Rather than Rego and Hanselaar simply influencing my work I feel like they have given me the green light to do what I do, so I can make work using dolls, and be both a painter and a printmaker.

While both of these artists have made works about violence and suffering, where I am at now in my work is that they are removed from violence and sexuality. I like to create a world that's safe and closed off from the rest.

When I couldn’t afford to be a full-time artist I’d come back from working all day in the service industry and anything that had annoyed or upset me I would channel into my art and it made me feel safe. It was never originally intended for anyone else, and I never thought it would be publicly displayed and received by so many visitors. I know there’s a lot of ambiguity in the narrative in each work and the emotions on each of the faces, which people will interpret differently, but I hope they can also make others feel safe.