Growing up in a society where sex sells, our bodies are displayed everywhere, yet in those images our genitals and breasts are never actually seen. Such images are considered ugly and taboo. Freud once said, “Our genital organs in themselves, the sight of which is always exciting, are nonetheless never considered beautiful.” After stumbling upon that statement in a book I was reading, On Ugliness by Umberto Eco, I decided to create a series of work that would prove the opposite.
I use a variety of media, such as watercolor, lithography, and oils to create close-up images of breasts and genitals. My references for these paintings come from personal experiences and memory and have started off as smaller than life or life sized images but have grown larger as the series continues. The larger and more close-up the paintings become, like Georgia O’Keeffe’s flowers, the more overwhelming they are. O’Keeffe’s statement, “I want them to see it whether they want to or not”, describes my work as well. My paintings are not meant to be viewed as erotic but instead as studies of parts of the body that we as a society have covered or overtly exposed. We are not our bodies but rather inhabitants of them. My paintings celebrate the bodies we call home.