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Jemima Kirke isn’t just one of HBO’s hit show GIRLS’ most beloved characters, but also a talented artist, mother, and women’s rights supporter (particularly of the arts), and exactly the cool, down-to-earth girl you want to hang out with. She’s wickedly funny, very smart, and exactly the type of modern woman worth girl crushing over. She paints almost every day in her Red Hook studio, refuses to shave under her arms, recently splurged on a pajama-inspired Fendi onesie, and likes to spend every weekend cooking breakfast for her two kids and husband until noon—or until the food runs out. In honour of Girls’ fifth season debut—Kirke says she was “excited to play Jessa in a season where she has more direction and character”—we sat down with the artist to discuss painting nude ladies, the people who keep her inspired, and how when it comes to fashion, she strives for “sort of dike-y looks”: Boots she can stomp around in, worn-in sweaters, and jeans that show off her butt.

Semaine: Tell us about the first moment you knew you wanted to be an artist.
Jemima: My mom always sort of had an agenda for all of the things she wanted her kids to do, so the second I showed an inclination towards art, that was my thing. I always had a little studio in the basement of all our houses. It was really nice actually. She always painted the wine cellar white and turned it into my studio. Since I was a toddler she gave me the space to make art…it was very strange. I started out making collages, and I would take all my birthday cards and Christmas cards and cut them out to make collages. I went to RISD. And then towards the end of college I was like ‘I don’t know what I want to do.’ I was having an identity crisis. So I stopped painting or doing anything for a year and moved to Florida. I met a guy there who wanted to paint me, and in turn gave me a corner of his studio. So that’s when I started painting again. I still have a complicated relationship with art, I can’t decide whether I love it or hate it.

Semaine: You mostly paint nude women. Why?
Jemima: I think it’s a combination of things. It’s because I prefer hanging out with women and I’m most comfortable with women. I’m more myself, and I think there’s a complexity to women that is more accessible to me. I am not so connected to a man’s complexities and issues. I have painted men, but only men that I’ve been sexually or romantically involved with, so I haven’t really given myself the chance to shy away from it because it becomes erotic. But the other part of it could be the classic idea that a woman is a painting. Most of the women I paint (and the paintings in my studio), I know. Some not. The topless one with the baby I don’t know. I just wanted to paint her because she has F sized boobs. I met her at a vintage store and I was like “can I paint you?” and she said, “yes, sure.” It’s different painting people that I´m not close to, and not in a bad way. It’s just that I get a bit less comfortable, so there´s some tension. I either speed up or I don’t fuss about it as much.