Meghan Markle
ORIGINAL SERIES
She was
fame hungry
Whatever Meghan Markle did, there seemed to be a story about what was wrong with her.
Meghan Markle became one of the most intensely scrutinised women in the British public eye after her relationship with Prince Harry became public and she joined the Royal Family.
She was labelled difficult, manipulative, attention-seeking, calculating and fame hungry. Her relationships, behaviour, appearance and intentions became subjects for public judgement, with contradictory narratives often existing at once.
I chose Meghan for the original Villains series because I was interested in the sheer scale of that judgement. Villains wasn't about deciding whether a public woman was right, wrong, likeable or misunderstood. It was about what happens when criticism becomes a language for defining who a woman is.
With Meghan, that language seemed almost endless.
THE DESTRUCTION
Duchess Difficult
About the Work
2026
Acrylic on canvas
I surrounded Meghan with words and accusations that have been used to describe her publicly, until the noise of them begins to compete with the portrait itself.
Across her forehead, I painted FAME HUNGRY in gold like a crown. The placement is intentional: it reflects the narrative that Meghan wanted proximity to royalty for power, fame and status.
Her face remains visible beneath it all. The destruction comes from the sheer accumulation of other people's narratives around her, until the woman herself becomes increasingly difficult to separate from the version of her we've been given.