Artist Statement for this body of work:

I reject the tradition of the male voyeur in depictions of the female nude. Through a consideration of my own figure and using nude self-portraiture, I examine how my gender expression has impacted my self-perception and societal perceptions of me. Inspired by historical artists like Suzanne Valadon and their representations of women that include self-portraits, I aim to reclaim the power of the female body by presenting my own form as an object to be experienced rather than looked at. Like the contemporary painter Jenny Saville, I choose to work on a large scale to create an unavoidable and uncompromising visual experience. I incorporate variations of my own gaze in the mirror to represent the complexity of the relationship I have with my own image and how it is perceived. Because of the emphasis on the life of the body, my process for producing these works is important to the overall meaning behind them. Applied with a palette knife I use a combination of thick acrylic paint layers and thinner layers of soft pastels to slowly build up veils of texture on the paper’s surface, creating a physicality which requires a process reminiscent of constructing my own identity and forming who I am. This way of working foregrounds the substance and presence of the body rather than the sensuality of it. I also work with pastel without acrylic paint to evoke a different physicality in the work, letting the lightness of the paper breathe through as if through skin. In doing this, the surface of the work can be likened to the fleetingness of looking in a mirror and the passage of time. When I begin a work, I do not think about the destination of it. Instead I focus on the process and how I am compelled to add to the surface. It is only after I have completed a work that I see I have created something that documents a moment in my evolving awareness of self.