My artwork has been figurative since I first transitioned from finger-painting to drawing. I have always depicted women. For years, I thought that was because women, in magazines, in movies, in the media, epitomized beauty. I subscribed to the societal constructs that define what is aesthetically appealing: facial symmetry, hourglass figures, skin devoid of blemishes. This view of body image hurt me. Scrolling through Instagram, flipping through Vogue, I saw the airbrushing and Photoshop, the perfectly packaged images that fit on one page, little pixels in a box.
Studies show that over half the women using social media edit their photos before posting them. There are thousands of “beauty” apps to download, apps that add makeup, enlarge eyes, thin loses, lighten skin, smooth stretch marks, slim waistlines.
There has recently been a trend, in advertisements especially, specifically movie posters and album art, in which women’s bodies are shown but their faces are not pictured. It is literal objectification. The woman is not real, not recognizable, expressionless.
Women’s bodies are idealized and fetishized. My artwork both parodies and perpetuates this trend. I crop images of women, focusing on glorified body parts, stomachs, clavicles, lips, eyes, breasts, jutting hips. I use media that can be smoothed and polished, oil paint, vine charcoal, chalk pastels, water colors, so that flesh and imperfections can be blended away. I frame the limbs in squares and rectangles.
I still subscribe to this idea of body image, even though I know it does not exist, that it is false. I am trying to question through my artwork what is beautiful, what is human, what is feasible.
Studies show that over half the women using social media edit their photos before posting them. There are thousands of “beauty” apps to download, apps that add makeup, enlarge eyes, thin loses, lighten skin, smooth stretch marks, slim waistlines.
There has recently been a trend, in advertisements especially, specifically movie posters and album art, in which women’s bodies are shown but their faces are not pictured. It is literal objectification. The woman is not real, not recognizable, expressionless.
Women’s bodies are idealized and fetishized. My artwork both parodies and perpetuates this trend. I crop images of women, focusing on glorified body parts, stomachs, clavicles, lips, eyes, breasts, jutting hips. I use media that can be smoothed and polished, oil paint, vine charcoal, chalk pastels, water colors, so that flesh and imperfections can be blended away. I frame the limbs in squares and rectangles.
I still subscribe to this idea of body image, even though I know it does not exist, that it is false. I am trying to question through my artwork what is beautiful, what is human, what is feasible.