Fall Thesis Proposal

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. My artwork works to rebel against this. 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  I examine the 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 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, 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”.

Over the past 13 weeks, I have had my ups and downs as an artist. I started off the 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 this semester 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 go 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 these “fractured collages” I made through digital manipulations of several of my nude models and have really been focusing on the idea of 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.

To achieve these ideas I have been doing intense research on how exactly to make my paint more flesh-like, including watching tutorials and experimenting with acrylic mediums such as extenders, molding paste and gel medium, as well as taking the advice of the both my peers and my teachers and spent time at the art museum just looking at different painting techniques. In addition to the technical and historical research, I have also been researching new 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.

As for where my work is headed in the future, including the DAAPworks show and dry run, I intend to continue painting my figures in a positive light, portraying them confidently grabbing their fleshy stomachs or embracing themselves in an attempt to convey the ideals of body positivity and self-love to my audience. I will do this by continuing to work on making my paint more fleshy-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 intend to continue working with the theme that has both fascinated and angered me for more than four years 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.

           

            

Current Works

As I'm sure you gleaned from my previous post, I had fallen behind and hit what was most likely a self imposed creativity block. However, a quick reality check really woke me up and inspired me to work. I got angry at myself and I in turn created one of my most successful pieces in only 8 hours of working on it, which was considerable less than the time I spent on my last big painting. I took one of the photo 'fractured collages' that I had created previously and I began painting. I was going to continue with the idea of the semi hard edge painting approach, however when I moved the piece to a bigger canvas, I realized that that technique wasn't as powerful or as successful as it had been on the smaller canvas.

 So with Frank's words swimming around my brain that I needed to be taking risks, I began throwing paint in the canvas, caring less about that mathematical precision I was doing previously but more about trying to make the paint more fleshy. I got so into the painting that I stopped focusing on trying to see the whole picture in the painting, I just got deep into the painting and let the painting do what it wanted instead of focusing on photo realism. I got so deep into it, that I didn't realize it was done until I took a bathroom break and as I was walking back towards the painting, it was as though a halo formed around it and cosmically told me it was finished. 
This painting actually restored my my need to create artwork.

And here's what I'm working on currently! This is going to be another heavily shadowed painting, however the subject matter speaks more on the idea that plus sized women are sexy to other people rather than just to themselves, however this kind of love is only amplified by self love. Obviously, there isn't much to it yet, as I just start and was only able to spend an hour or so on it, but so far I believe it is successful. Below is the picture that it will be referencing. 

This Semester's Work Part Four

This is where everything both fell apart and came together. I knew I was behind in my work. I had fallen behind due to extreme stress, busyness with my nearly full time job and also with my home life. I began thinking more about my future plans like where I would work after school, whether I wanted to stay working at Teavana and move up through the ranks and use that as my money making job and make art on the side,  planning my graduation trip, planning my wedding and figuring out what I needed to do to move out of my parents house. These are all important things but not nearly as important as I was making it. I laid my work aside and fell behind because I was more worried about what I needed to do after graduation and less about the things that would ultimately get me to graduation. This all changed when I got an email from Frank Herrman, who was concerned that I was not making enough work for advanced painting and reminding me the there was only 27 days until Thanksgiving Break and then when we came back from break, that is DAAP Hell Week and exam week followed that. With the prospect of DAAPworks looming, I, first spent several minutes crying because I was mad at myself for doing this, then I got to work. This reality check was just the kick in the pants that I needed. I went home that night and began painting one of my most successful pieces that I have made all year.

This Semester's Work Part Three

My work has changed a lot over the past few weeks, but this is where things got really hairy. I burst through that roadblock that I was experiencing. I had a really informative critique where it was suggested that to help push my work further into abstraction that I start taking different pictures of my models and splicing them together and focusing on a portion of the body to better portray that the idea of body positivity, which is essentially what my work has focused on for three years. I called this work series my 'fractured collages' and they were extremely successful, however like all meteors, it burned bright for a brief moment but then burnt out just as quickly as it had started. I quickly got tired of the idea. However the reason that this idea was so short lived, it is not because my life was so extremely busy and it just fell to the back burner. Because of working 30 hours a week on top of school and school work, I ended up having nearly 2 weeks where I did not paint a single thing.

This Semester's Work Part Two

After realizing the all hard edge approach was not getting my point across in the way that I had originally thought that it would, I began moving into this idea of semi hard edged pieces. I began sketching and painting my figures in a geometrical way but without taping off the edges as I been doing with my work previously. This was met with overwhelming satisfaction by everyone who viewed my work. They said it made the figure fold better and gave them a physicality that I made them slightly more realistic. I understood that, but nonetheless, the work that I was creating wasn't fulfilling me. I felt as though I was hitting that proverbial roadblock that sometimes plagues me.

As you can see from this picture, I was only able to crank out two pieces with this idea. 

This Semester's Work Part One

I started this semester off thinking that I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Last semester (spring '13), I had spent most of semester really confused and was forcing out work, however I was finally able to make one really great, successful piece at the very end of the semester; and 5 foot tall painting of a woman's back in hard edge.  Originally I was focusing on the aspect of portraying plus size women as goddesses and it turned way too kitschy for me and it made the women look like mythical creatures which I didn't want. I want my figures to say "I'm here now, an I'm not going away". So I was working with making my figures larger than life when I was just drawing and I "what would happen if" I drew the figure in hard edge. And it's kinda symbolic of being forceful in wanting to not be told to be that they must change themselves to be considered sexy. I continued working with the hard edged figures well into this semester and spent three weeks working with it exclusively. 

While I did enjoy creating this, I began feeling lost and burnt out of the idea of hard edge, as well as believing there was a better way to portray the overwhelming theme in my work, rather than reducing the female body into a system of straight lines.

Inspirational Artist Spotlight:Jenny Saville

Jenny Saville is a contemporary British painter, famous for large scale depictions of nude women. Saville gained her art degree at the Glasgow School of Art in 1992, but was later offered a six month scholarship to attend the University of Cincinnati’s DAAP program, where she states that she saw "Lots of big women. Big white flesh in shorts and T-shirts. It was good to see because they had the physicality that I was interested in"

After completing her post graduate degree at Slade School of Fine Art, Jenny quickly rose to fame when one of England’s top collectors, Charles Saatchi, bought the entirety of her senior show and supported for 18 months, while she created new works that he in turn displayed at the Saatchi Gallery in London. Shortly after her contract with Saatchi ended, Saville emerged as a Young British Artist (YBA) and is now widely considered to be an abject artist because of the controversial subject matter that she deals with. She credits that her feminist subject matter of nude obese women with often obscured or erased faces to her time spent in America, specifically of her time in Cincinnati at DAAP.

Since her debut in 1992, Saville's focus has remained on the female body, slightly deviating into subjects with "floating or in determinant gender," painting large scale paintings of transgender people. Her published sketches and documents include surgical photographs of liposuction, trauma victims, deformity correction, disease states and transgender patients.

Although Saville lives and works in Oxford, England, she has said that she prefers to show in America.  "It is odd to be showing in Britain. I've been shown a lot in America; that's my favorite place to show. We're quite conceptually driven in Britain. There's less guilt about being a painter over there."

My work is very similar to Jenny Saville, My work is also of a feminist subject matter, dealing with ideas of body positivity, body image, societal beauty standards and sexuality and I achieve this by depicting the fat female form in acrylic paint, digital mediums, pastels and colored pencils. I am really obsessed with the physicality of rolling flesh and portraying beauty in the things that much of society deems ugly. Saville works in a similar way, although her work is less about trying to change society like I am, but rather she portrays women because she is fascinated by them and their figures.