Single Woman Bored Of 'Are You Single?' Question Makes Boyfriends Out Of Clay

Artist Mary Stephenson has created seven clay partners in her London-based studio, where she also stages elaborate date scenes with them.

For Mary, it all started at a wedding in 2015, when a guest told her that her past three years of being single had been, ‘a waste.’

The 27-year-old explained: “It made me start thinking, what is this sort of perception that we have of other people and what are our goals for each other?

"What are society's pressures for people, and do we have to be a couple?

“So I started playing around with these ideas and scenarios about ambitious relationships and hypothetical goals for the future and my anxieties around them.

"And I thought, if society wants me to be in a relationship then I will put myself in a relationship.”

Amazingly, Mary’s clay boyfriends only take one day to create and they all have different facial features, hairstyles and skin tones but the 27-year-old insists that the boyfriends don’t have names or personalities to make them more redundant from the scene.

She said: “The scenarios and the portraits are supposed to be more about my projection for myself and the future, and what I anticipate with relationships, as opposed to what the men are like.

“I think a lot of the time when we look into the future and what we want for ourselves, it’s rare that the person is that vivid and defined.”

Although the clay boyfriends are created to not have personalities, Mary did mould one by finding inspiration from the internet.

The Glasgow School of Art graduate said: “When I start making them they kind of come out of nowhere and I just have to go with it and the clay really dictates how they end up looking, the lips especially take form very quickly and I tend to quite like big noses.

“I decided one day to google ‘handsome man’ to see what came up and unsurprisingly it was images of Zac Efron and Zac Efron lookalikes, which aren’t necessarily my cup of tea but I thought it was interesting to look at that stream of images and create a mash-up of that kind of thing.”

Previous dates with Mary’s first six clay boyfriends have seen her on a picnic, on a romantic getaway in Paris and even a scene showing the artist introducing one boyfriend to her friends at a social gathering.

The artist’s latest date scene creation features a bathroom, showcasing a typical couple dressed in their bathrobes - with canvas robes and a paper bathtub. But all of Mary’s scenes are inspired by love-themed movies and television programmes.

She explained: “Romance and society's idea of it has played a big role within the date scenarios as films and TV have a really strong identity of romance and relationships.

"I think they play a massive role in what we want for ourselves and they’re very seductive things that we aspire to.”

As for Stephenson’s real love life, she is currently single but believes that the art project has helped her to grow in confidence and even sees it as a form of therapy.

Mary said: “I think I’ve grown in confidence with being single. By playing out these roles I’ve realised my confidence in not being in them.

“Some of the most successful portraits are ones where I look quite bored and I think that speaks to me quite loudly that I don’t really want to be in that situation right now."

And Mary’s project has struck a chord with other women in a similar situation.

“People have been really supportive and lots of women have emailed me saying the project really resonates with them,” she said.

“It confirms a kind of confusion, and to share a confusion with someone makes it all slightly better.”

To take a look at more of Mary’s incredible art work, visit her website: http://www.mary-stephenson.com/