There is something magical about art, and the multifaceted ways in which a person engages with it. Being the artist, we are often so close to the process, we are not aware of the breadth or depth it contains. Much like our lives.
In creating a piece, I never focus on the whole piece, but am lost in each step. Any more than I am aware of my whole line of quilts I have made in the 20 plus years I have been quilting.
When the nude ladies began to hold my interest, I felt intrigued by their braveness and open acceptance. It was odd for me to create, minus fun outfits.
I was then made to grapple with the woman; alone.
There are so many layers to who we are, and how we present ourselves to the world.
And, for the most part, we are guilty of 'judging a book by its cover'.
It has been an interesting challenge to create nudes in their natural pose.
Which leads to what is my most natural state. Who am I beneath what I wear and do?
I was used to making woman doing this or that - a skier, in the woods, and with all its trappings; but now I am challenged with nude woman.
How to express her?
You don't really realize how much of you is covered up or propped up.
Until you are asked to let them go.
Working with nudes is pushing me to express in different ways - which then leads to seeing things differently - or more deeply.
I am liking the challenge and feel like a beginner once again.
When I began doing art, the background of each piece was where I focused, and then the clothes, and then slowly a body emerged.
In working with nudes, it brings the focus more deeper into who the woman is, NOT what she is doing. And yet the props are still there, but instead I feel the vulnerability of the woman.
Or bravery.
Even her freedom to be seen.
Unapologetically
It is exciting to uncover another layer of life.
Being from a religion, where the body was seen as sinful, and how we were born sinners, that we are somehow bad, in our natural state, nudes feel like sin in my mind at times.
I also experienced men losing control because of my body. Or, that my body was the cause of their wrongness.
There are so many ways in which a body isn't okay.
We were not taught of its innocence; but rather it was shameful at best.
Empowering myself, and my art, to reclaim my body.
Getting my mind right happens in Art.
My body has been innocent all along; but my mind has been twisted in ways that have not allowed me to fully sit in my natural state.
