Quinn returns to the earliest impulse to draw, reimagining her own childhood images that no longer exist alongside the examination of historical representations of the self in art. Her engagement with the past considers the continuities between those who made images before her, particularly the legacies of women artists, and her own impulse to make them now. These parallel histories become part of an ongoing attempt to understand where the need to create comes from, and what it means to inherit and continue a history of image-making.

Alongside the self-portrait, the wild swan emerges as a central image within the paintings. With reference to W. B. Yeats’ ‘The Wild Swans of Coole’, the swan moves throughout the work like a symbolic guide, carrying traces of the past into the possibility of transformation.