Art by Trinity Sutterfield: Cedric Michael Cox

Monday, April 8, 2013

Cedric Michael Cox

Last month Cedric Michael Cox came in and visited our class. His work is so very different from mine (but awesome nonetheless), but I was really taken by him as a person. A friend of mine has worked as an intern for him several times and she told me that he is awesome a happy and chipper person and a great, down to earth artist who is always full of wonderful advice.

I don't remember the specifics of the presentation but what I really enjoyed about him was that his presentation was a grim look into the future. He wasn't angry or bitter about his life or the art community, but was as eager and excited as a college student who has just graduated and has his entire future ahead of him. He provided useful advice on how to not be a starving artist, like lowering your expectations and living expenses and how to grants and scholarships, while still maintaining that fervor for life and your art, so you don't end up as a angry old man, bitter because you never 'made it'. Be happy and make the art that you need to keep yourself sane.

Like I said, he was a truly inspiration artist and speaker. For more information on him, please visit his personal art blog.

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Trinity Sutterfield

Feminist Activist Artist from Cincinnati. I currently live in the bustling metropolis of Hebron Kentucky, but spend most of my time at The University of Cincinnati- DAAP (Design, Architecture, Art and Planning).

For many years now I have been interested in the societal beauty demands that women are faced with. My artwork takes a critical view of social and cultural issues. In my work, I explore themes like body positivity and feminism, feminism and the effects of societal beauty standards on women through many mediums including drawing, painting, photography and digital editing/painting. My work is influenced by artists as diverse as Ewan Uglow, Jenny Saville, Sandro Botticelli and William Bouguereau. I am also influenced by many writers, including blogs such as Adipositivity and Dances with Fat. Daily, women are faced with thousands of images and articles telling them that are not good enough, simply because they are not small enough. I do not believe this is true. My work celebrates the plus size body, often showing the attributes that society deems ugly or undesirable as the ideal. I aim to cause social change. It is for this reason that I call myself a feminist activist artist. As a whole my work is typically positive, celebrating the body and teaching my audience to love theirs; however it also tends to demonize society’s thin obsession. I have been focusing on this theme for nearly four years and I still hold the same fervor and passion for it that I did when I first started working with it; however my concept has matured beyond just showing that big women are beautiful to showing that all bodies are beautiful no matter their size. I tend focus on bigger women because there is more of an element of rebellion there in portraying beauty in a figure that society deems ugly or undesirable, rather than in portraying a figure that is slightly more socially acceptable because it is smaller. With my work, I aim to show the world that all bodies are beautiful not only in spite of their size but also because of their size.