"Celebration of the Fat Venus"

This is my final piece for DAAPworks. Later this week, I'll post the piece when it's actually well lit, but until then, here she is! 

Trinity Sutterfield: Final Thesis. A Culmination of Four Years at DAAP

     
      For many years, I have been fascinated by the idea of societal beauty standards and the affect it has on the female psyche. Daily, women are faced with thousands of images and articles telling them that are not good enough, simply because they are not small enough. A quick jaunt through the grocery store checkout line reveals many magazines that profit off of making women of all sizes hate their bodies. My artwork works to rebel against this. I aim to cause social change. It is for this reason that I call myself a feminist activist artist. With my work, I examine themes such as body and fat positivity, feminism and the effects that these beauty standards have on women. As a whole, my work focuses on body image, societal beauty standards and defying them by glorifying the aspects of a woman’s body that society deems ugly or undesirable, such as stretch marks and cellulite. 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. Daily women of all sizes are told by the media that they are ugly or unworthy of love unless they are a certain size that is achievable by less than five percent of the American population. 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 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.

 My work explores the relationship between beauty standards and the female psyche, as well as the idea that every body is beautiful. With my figures of nude women of various sizes, portrayed in a positive light, and the accompanying imagery, and sometimes text, I am currently examining themes of body positivity, feminism and the effects of societal beauty standards on women through many mediums including drawing, painting, photography and digital editing/painting. As for my audience, I want my work to not only challenge them to think beyond what society has taught them, but I also want my work to instill a sense of anger, or rather be a call to action to rebel at the idea of women being told by society that “if they are small enough, quiet enough, compliant enough and saccharine enough, you will somehow be enough” writes Lunette, co-founder and writer of the body positive blog, YRwelcome. In my current work I am creating large scale, usually between three feet and seven feet tall, paintings of nude and often faceless women of plus sizes. I often draw reference to the classic paintings of Venus and display my figures in a positive light to show the conceptual meaning behind my work, which can be summarized into one simple statement, “all bodies are beautiful not only in spite of their size but also because of their size”.

I started working with this idea mid-way through my freshman year in DAAP when I finally had had enough. After high school, I lost more than fifty pounds in less than six months because I fell victim to what all the magazines, TV shows, and even some of my friends and family pushed down my throat; that unless I lost weight, I would be unlovable, no one would want me, that I was not, and could not be beautiful because I was too big. I was well on my way to developing an eating disorder, simply because as my weight began to come off, five to ten pounds a week, everyone cheered me on, applauded me for my “success” and encouraged me to continue. While I will never condemn someone for losing weight in a healthy manner, I will always discourage people from believing their bodies are not absolutely perfect the way they are. My work is to combat the notion that one’s worth is in direct correlation with their weight. Often times when I explain my work and why I am fat positive, I get a variety of responses from anger to confusion, but most are just confused because they have been trained to believe that fat people are not only unhealthy but also undesirable, and they shut down, wondering why I think being fat is ok. I will consider my work successful when I have a completed series of work and if both my colleagues in art and my friends outside the art world are able to look at my work and understand it without a lot of explanation. My work aims to change how someone thinks, so I believe it is important to me to have my work challenge both men and women, both inside and outside the art educated world. I want my work to challenge my viewers to see themselves and those around them differently and rebel simply by loving their bodies just the way they are. I believe that every body is beautiful and it is my goal to change society’s obsession with the bodies of their peers, so that they can see that all these bodies are beautiful and that it is not imperative for one to find all bodies attractive but it is, however, imperative for them to agree that all bodies are beautiful to someone. To quote a familiar band, Mumford and Sons, through my work I strive to say “Lend me your eyes; I can change how you see”.

Over the past year, I have had my ups and downs as an artist. I started off the fall semester thinking that I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Near the end of my junior year, after an entire semester of creative blocks and forcing work, I was able to create one really successful piece, a four foot tall painting of a woman’s nude back in hard edge. Because of the success I had with this piece, I started my senior year continuing to work in hard edge, however after spending a significant amount of time focusing more on the mathematical precision of hard edge painting rather than on the concept of my art, I began to feel that there was better way to achieve the overwhelming theme to my work. So it was, pun intended, back to the drawing board. As the semester progressed, I began to pull away from the hard edge painting slowly; for a time I painted in “semi hard edge”, even delving into the world of collaging. I began making paintings in several steps, first interviewing women about what part of their bodies they were most insecure about and after cutting apart pictures of these insecurities, I would collage them together and from there, paint the collage that I had made. Again this became more about the process and less about the conceptual meaning behind my work, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it ultimately was not what I was trying to achieve so I eventually stopped doing it altogether. I then moved into this idea of painting more in the classical style, and began referencing the work of master artists like Botticelli and famous painting like The Birth of Venus. I then followed by spending the next eight weeks creating a large 4'x3' painting of myself cast in the role of Venus which I titled "Artist as the Venus". I have cast myself as Venus a lot, therefore alluding to my plus size body as the ideal. Casting myself as Venus is in direct contrast of America’s obsession of equating thinness to beauty. Doing this painting was an interesting study for me. I had never really worked in style such as this and I believe that it was important for me to do this painting so that I could learn myself better and learn where my painting inspiration should be coming from. However, while I was creating it I was bored and frustrated and it felt like I was confined to a certain style which I did not want to be. Ultimately I do not consider this a failed experience; it was just that, an experience, I learned a lot by doing this. More recently I have gone back to my roots of what I was working on in sophomore year. This may sound like a regression, but it's not. Conceptually, my work is never been stronger than what I was creating during my advanced drawing classes that I took in my sophomore and beginning of my junior year. I explored different mediums and alternative methods and did much more research into my work before creating it. As of late, I would do small amounts of research and then spend exorbitant amount of time creating the actual piece. My work became more about the final product rather than the conceptual meaning behind it. I've consistently had a trouble with that push pull relationship and finding the happy medium with final product and conceptual meaning. However with the final piece and I'm working on for DAAPworks I believe I've finally found it. By going back to my roots and finding that point in my work when my conceptual meaning was strongest, I've been able to create some of my best work with the technical skills that I have obtained in the past two years since creating those pieces. It's been an interesting meld between taking my old work and revamping it with my new technical skills that have I have amassed over the past two years by doing exploratory  works like the aforementioned "Artist as the Venus" and the "Artist's Sister in Hard Edge". Ultimately, I feel this final piece is a combination of all of the things that I have learned in the past five years in DAAP.

As I said before I really feel like my final piece for DAAPworks is a culmination of everything I have learned in my five years in DAAP. I have taken a piece that I made in sophomore year and have re-created it with my technical skills that I have amassed over the past two years since the original piece's creation. My final piece is a large 6' x 4' piece in which I have used alternative methods to create it; a combination of collaging, painting, liquid latex, and makeup. By using these alternative methods, I am challenging the constraints of traditional master painting and referencing a certain political rebellion that is inherently in my work that stems from vehemently ignoring societal beauty standards and choosing to love my body. If more women did this, I believe that it could change the world. I'm using this alternative method to a very skin like texture. For the past year I have really been focusing on the idea of making my paintings look very skin like and fleshy, which portrays a realness to the audience, making my concept more hard hitting and harder to ignore. By combining the stained paper, makeup and liquid latex, I'm able to make the paper look very skin like. I will then take that skin like creation and affix it to my canvas background, and thus creating a figure that looks very lifelike. My figure will be shown from the back, with her hands held high in the air in a celebratory pose. The background is a little more abstract, she is facing a color field of soft undulating colors of blue, green, purple and warm gray, sharply contrasting the color of her soft, peachy skin. While she is not completely finished, I have a clear idea in my head of the steps I need to take to have her finished in time.

In addition to extensive technical and historical research, I have been researching my conceptual ideas in greater depth through the many body positive blogs I follow and read regularly. I have found that I get the best information and inspiration from “underground” resources as there are not a lot of scholarly sources that have subscribed to the body positivity movement. I have come to realize that this movement of body and fat positivity is still in its early stages and the best information comes from a few individuals who have chosen to think outside of what society tells them. Some of the blogs that I read regularly are Dances With Fat, YrWelcome, Plus Size Yoga and Adipositivity. Dances With Fat is a blog run by a vegan dancer named Ragen Chastain, who, despite being classified as ‘super-obese’, is able to dance and move in ways that many thin women cannot. For a long time, I would read her hate mail as a way of fueling the fire that drives my work. Yrwelcome is a blog run by three women who are ‘saving the world’ by building up the fat community as well as those of LGBTQ and people of color communities and are doing this by being jerky and hilarious so “You’re welcome”. But my favorite of these blogs is Adipositivity, who is run by Substansia Jones. Jones describes herself at vehemently hedonistic and an “uppity fatty”. She is a photographer of plus size women and men and strives to show her subjects, of all sizes and shapes, in an extremely positive light, much like I do in my work.

Over the years, I have been inspired by many different artists. That being said there are two artists in particular that have affected me and inspired me immensely; Jenny Saville and Euan Uglow. Jenny Saville is a British contemporary artist that deals with themes similar to mine, including body positivity, body image and sexuality and is now widely considered as an abject artist because of the way she deals with these controversial subjects and how she portrays them. In stark contrast is Euan Uglow, who typically deals with the thinner female form; however he uses mathematical precision to paint and draw his figures, often painting the different color changes as plane changes. I believe that it was his work that inspired me to begin painting in hard edge.

As for where my work is headed in the future, including the DAAPworks show, I intend to continue painting my figures in a positive light, portraying them confidently grabbing their fleshy stomachs embracing themselves or posing them in ways that reference master artists in an attempt to convey the ideals of body positivity and self-love that I’m focusing on to my audience. I am doing this by continuing to work on making my paint more flesh-like, researching and looking at more paintings to get more ideas on how paint can be handled by looking at different artists of the past. As it has been suggested is many of my critiques this semester, I will continue to keep pushing my works further into abstraction as well as increasing my canvas size until my figures are larger than life and invoke an imposing feeling in my audience.

            In conclusion, I will continue working with this subject of body positivity, a subject that has both fascinated and angered me. I will continue working with this idea so long as women spend hours agonizing about their weight, obsessing over diets, and literally starving themselves because they cannot achieve the golden medium that society pushes down our collective throats. and I cannot wait to see what kind of work I will create as I begin to make my paintings larger than life to invoke an angry response in my audience that will in turn challenge them to think about my concept that all bodies are beautiful not only in spite of their size but also because of their size.

Works Cited

"Anorexic Art." Freaking News Pictures. N.p., 2008. Web. 07 Feb. 2014.

Bouguereau, William. The Birth of Venus. 1879. Web. 06 Feb. 2014.

Chastain, Ragen. "Dances With Fat." Dances With Fat. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Feb. 2014.

Jones, Substansia. "The Adipositivity Project." The Adipositivity Project. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Feb. 2014.

Karnes, Amber. "Body Positive Yoga." Body Positive Yoga. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Feb. 2014.

Lunette. "You're Welcome." Youre Welcome. N.p., 11 Feb. 2011. Web. 06 Feb. 2014.

Meadow-Stallings, Ariel. Offbeat Home RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Feb. 2014.

Saville, Jenny. Untitled. N.d. Saatchi. Web. 07 Feb. 2014.

Uglow, Euan. Summer Picture. 1971. Web. 07 Feb. 2014.

An update

Alright, so as you all have probably noticed, I am terrible about making regular posts on here, but this time it is for a legit reason. I have been working on this huge painting and it is taking me forever. Until very recently, I always made smaller paintings, pieces no bigger than 24"x 30", however, this new piece is right about 4 feet tall and 2 feet wide. It took me a moment to adjust to it, but now I am nearly finished with it. Below are all my in progress pictures from the beginning until now.

Current.

Thesis rough draft

Trinity Sutterfield

Senior Thesis

Thesis Rough Draft

02.02.2014

            For many years, I have been fascinated by the idea of societal beauty standards and the affect it has on the female psyche. Daily, women are faced with thousands of images and articles telling them that are not good enough, simply because they are not small enough. A quick jaunt through the grocery store checkout line reveals many magazines that profit off of making women of all sizes hate their bodies. My artwork works to rebel against this. I aim to cause social change. It is for this reason that I call myself a feminist activist artist. As a whole, my work focuses on body image, societal beauty standards and defying them by glorifying the things that society deems ugly or undesirable. 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. Daily women of all sizes are told by the media that they are ugly or unworthy of love unless they are a certain size that is achievable by less than five percent of the American population. 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 rather than in portraying a figure that is slightly more socially acceptable because it is smaller.

 My work explores the relationship between beauty standards and the female psyche, as well as the idea that every body is beautiful. With my figures of nude women of various sizes, portrayed in a positive light, and the accompanying imagery, and sometimes text, I am currently examining themes of body positivity, feminism and the effects of societal beauty standards on women through many mediums including drawing, painting, photography and digital editing/painting. As for my audience, I want my work to not only challenge them to think beyond what society has taught them, but I also want my work to instill a sense of anger, or rather be a call to action to rebel at the idea of women being told by society that if they are small enough, quiet enough, compliant enough and saccharine enough, you will somehow be enough. In my current work I am creating large scale paintings of nude, and often faceless, women of plus sizes, often drawing reference to the classic paintings of Venus and displayed in a positive light to show the conceptual meaning behind my work, which can be summarized into one simple statement, “all bodies are beautiful not only in spite of their size but also because of their size”.

I started working with this idea mid-way through my freshman year in DAAP when I finally had had enough. After high school, I lost more than fifty pounds in less than six months because I fell victim to what all the magazines, TV shows, and even some of my friends and family pushed down my throat; that unless I lost weight, I would be unlovable, no one would want me, that I was not a beautiful because I was too big. I was well on my way to developing an eating disorder, simply because as my weight began to come off, five to ten pounds a week, everyone cheered me on, applauded me for my “success” and encouraged me to continue. While I will never condemn someone for losing weight in a healthy manner, I will always discourage people from believing their bodies are not absolutely perfect the way they are. My work is to combat the notion that one’s worth is in direct correlation with their weight. Often times when I explain why my work and why I am fat positive, I get a variety of responses from anger to confusion. “I’m fat positive because I’m a feminist, and I refuse to acknowledge in the magical thinking that if you’re small enough, quiet enough, compliant enough and saccharine enough, you will somehow be enough” writes Lunette who runs a body positive block call YrWelcome. I will consider my work successful when I have a completed series of work and if both my colleagues in art and my friends outside the art world are able to look at my work and understand it without a lot of explanation. My work aims to change how someone thinks, so I want my work to challenge my viewers to see themselves differently and rebel simply by loving their bodies just the way they are. To quote a familiar band, Mumford and Sons, through my work I say “Lend me your eyes; I can change how you see”.

Over the past year, I have had my ups and downs as an artist. I started off the fall semester thinking that I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Near the end of my junior year, after an entire semester of creative blocks and forcing work, I was able to create one really successful piece, a five foot tall painting of a woman’s nude back in hard edge. Because of the success I had with this piece, I started my senior year continuing to work in hard edge, however after spending a significant amount of time focusing more on the mathematical precision of hard edge painting rather than on the concept of my art. I began to feel that there was better way to achieve the overwhelming theme to my work. So it was, pun intended, back to the drawing board. As the semester progressed, I began to pull away from the hard edge painting slowly; for a time I painted in “semi hard edge” and eventually stopped doing it altogether. I have since moved into this idea of painting more in the classical style, and more recently I have started referencing the work of master artists like Botticelli and famous painting like The Birth of Venus. I have really been focusing on the idea of making my paintings look very skin-like and fleshy, which portrays a realness to the audience, thus making my concept more hard hitting and harder to  ignore.

In addition to extensive technical and historical research, I have been researching my conceptual ideas in greater depth through the many body positive blogs I follow and read regularly. I have found that I get the best information and inspiration from “underground” resources because I have come to realize that this movement of body positivity is still in its early stages and the best information comes from a few individuals who have chosen to think outside of what society tells them. Some of the blogs that I read regularly are Dances With Fat, YrWelcome and Adipositivity.

As for where my work is headed in the future, including the DAAPworks show, I intend to continue painting my figures in a positive light, portraying them confidently grabbing their fleshy stomachs embracing themselves or posing them in ways that reference master artists in an attempt to convey the ideals of body positivity and self-love that I’m focusing on, to my audience. I am doing this by continuing to work on making my paint more flesh-like, researching and looking at more paintings to get more ideas on how paint can be handled by looking at different artists of the past. As it has been suggested is many of my critiques this semester, I will continue to keep pushing my works further into abstraction as well as increasing my canvas size until my figures are larger than life and invoke an imposing feeling in my audience.

            In conclusion, I will continue working with this subject of body positivity, a subject that has both fascinated and angered me. I will continue working with this idea so long as women spend hours agonizing about their weight, obsessing over diets, and literally starving themselves because they cannot achieve the golden medium that society pushes down our collective throats. and I cannot wait to see what kind of work I will create as I begin to make my paintings larger than life to invoke an angry response in my audience that will in turn challenge them to think about my concept that all bodies are beautiful not only in spite of their size but also because of their size.