Event Title

Pure

Presenter Information

Sarah Mollere

College(s)

College of Liberal Arts

Submission Type

Art

Description

The female nude is a traditional image that has been and continues to be used throughout the history of painting. In my opinion, the viewers’ response to the female nude, in all mediums, represents the culture in which we live. During the classical era, the nude female was typically represented as a sexualized goddess of desire, idealizing beauty and provoking a sense of eroticism. Modernists painted the female nude to explore the politics of representation as a response to the past. During the 1960’s and 70’s, feminist artists used the nude female as a weapon against social constructs of gender and to combat their subordinate roles in society. Today, there is a large amount of pressure on women’s physical selves. The standards for beauty are unrealistic. The access to photography in the form of social media fosters a hunger for compliments and approval on physical appearance for young women. Painting the female nude is a way for me, as a young woman in today’s culture, to escape the self scrutinizing and criticizing of my own body and physical imperfections, as well as the cultural and societal pressures of achieving a prescribed level of beauty.

My work contemporizes the traditional image of the reclined female through composition and close investigation of the surface of the skin. The figure’s relation to the surface of the objects and the elimination of a surrounding environment in which she resides provokes a democracy of attention from the viewer. I place the same amount of energy representing the furniture’s surface and texture in attempt to pull attention back to sight and touch and the sublime complexity of surfaces that surround us and are a part of us.

The female models in each of my oil paintings are photographed in a way that portrays relaxation, nonchalance and the casual. They are comfortable, gazing toward the viewer, acknowledging the photographer and viewer’s presence. The images are cropped in a manner that cuts off portions of the model’s face and eliminates depth. During the photographing process, the models are told what to sit on and where to look but the rest is up to them. Their poses are personal and natural, enhancing a sense of insouciance within the painting. The form and flesh of the figures and form and textures of the surrounding objects stay true to the photographs I am working from. The honest representation illustrates the single, organic moment captured by the camera, contrasting the multiple, successive moments experienced when painting from life.

The painting process acts as a fusion of the senses of sight and touch. Similar to the large, sometimes grotesque figures of British painters Jenny Saville and Lucian Freud, my scrupulous observation and investigation of the figure’s flesh tones and textures (tan lines, scars, etc.) paired with the life size, or larger-than-life size, scale of the paintings allows me to bring the figure to life in the presence of the viewer.

Each painting’s composition has a specific part of the body that jets out into the foreground of the image. This compositional choice accentuates the durability and vitality of the female body opposing the human body’s fragility and vulnerability portrayed in the paintings of Saville and Freud. The application of paint and obscurity of proportions elevates those body parts to a higher level of importance, accentuating the picturesque intricacy of human flesh and form.

The works in this series serve as a successful distraction to negative projections on my own body and self. Ultimately, it has led to greater self-confidence and a broader definition of beauty than what we are fed.

48'' x 48''

oil on masonite

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1st place

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Pure

The female nude is a traditional image that has been and continues to be used throughout the history of painting. In my opinion, the viewers’ response to the female nude, in all mediums, represents the culture in which we live. During the classical era, the nude female was typically represented as a sexualized goddess of desire, idealizing beauty and provoking a sense of eroticism. Modernists painted the female nude to explore the politics of representation as a response to the past. During the 1960’s and 70’s, feminist artists used the nude female as a weapon against social constructs of gender and to combat their subordinate roles in society. Today, there is a large amount of pressure on women’s physical selves. The standards for beauty are unrealistic. The access to photography in the form of social media fosters a hunger for compliments and approval on physical appearance for young women. Painting the female nude is a way for me, as a young woman in today’s culture, to escape the self scrutinizing and criticizing of my own body and physical imperfections, as well as the cultural and societal pressures of achieving a prescribed level of beauty.

My work contemporizes the traditional image of the reclined female through composition and close investigation of the surface of the skin. The figure’s relation to the surface of the objects and the elimination of a surrounding environment in which she resides provokes a democracy of attention from the viewer. I place the same amount of energy representing the furniture’s surface and texture in attempt to pull attention back to sight and touch and the sublime complexity of surfaces that surround us and are a part of us.

The female models in each of my oil paintings are photographed in a way that portrays relaxation, nonchalance and the casual. They are comfortable, gazing toward the viewer, acknowledging the photographer and viewer’s presence. The images are cropped in a manner that cuts off portions of the model’s face and eliminates depth. During the photographing process, the models are told what to sit on and where to look but the rest is up to them. Their poses are personal and natural, enhancing a sense of insouciance within the painting. The form and flesh of the figures and form and textures of the surrounding objects stay true to the photographs I am working from. The honest representation illustrates the single, organic moment captured by the camera, contrasting the multiple, successive moments experienced when painting from life.

The painting process acts as a fusion of the senses of sight and touch. Similar to the large, sometimes grotesque figures of British painters Jenny Saville and Lucian Freud, my scrupulous observation and investigation of the figure’s flesh tones and textures (tan lines, scars, etc.) paired with the life size, or larger-than-life size, scale of the paintings allows me to bring the figure to life in the presence of the viewer.

Each painting’s composition has a specific part of the body that jets out into the foreground of the image. This compositional choice accentuates the durability and vitality of the female body opposing the human body’s fragility and vulnerability portrayed in the paintings of Saville and Freud. The application of paint and obscurity of proportions elevates those body parts to a higher level of importance, accentuating the picturesque intricacy of human flesh and form.

The works in this series serve as a successful distraction to negative projections on my own body and self. Ultimately, it has led to greater self-confidence and a broader definition of beauty than what we are fed.

48'' x 48''

oil on masonite