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.
