Katie Tomlinson's Player 2 (Nymph by a Stream) transforms Renoir's idyllic vision of a nymph into a critique of patriarchal power. The painting reclaims the nymph, a figure historically idealised and subjected to the male gaze, by morphing her with a red-belly piranha. In this “fantasy”, the nymph from the object of desire becomes a fierce subject with great strength – from prey the woman becomes a predator.

The painting engages with Tomlinson’s ongoing themes of duality: the grotesque and the beautiful, power and vulnerability, liberation within societal confinement. The nymph’s body, once passive and decorative, becomes a fighter, encapsulating the queering of imposed beauty standards. Just like the piranha, which hunts in packs and isn’t a threat when alone, the painting is a call for union and collectivity in the face of oppressive structures.