Map #6

The Body... and how it relates to my work.

The body, as we have learned, is present in all artistic expression in one form or another.  It can exist quite literally in art, through figure drawing, which is a direct representation of the human form as exists in space.
There are also symbolic representations for the body, such as Mona Hatoum's piece titled Corps etranger 1994, which is a video installation.  The installation consists of a video, accompanied by recorded sounds of the artists heartbeat and breathing.  Viewer's follow as the camera pans the body, and eventually penetrates the interior of the stomach, intestines and vagina through various orifices.  Another artist, Robert Gober, has a piece Untitled (1990), in which he has covered as bag with beeswax, pigment and human hair to resemble a man's hairy torso.

As you can see, there are many ways in which contemporary artists explore the theme of the body.  I had the challenge of relating the topic of the body to my own work.  I would say that my own work deals very much with the body in a spiritual sense.  Of course, I represent the body very close to how it exists in real-life, through photo realistic paintings.  But I also deal with the body through personal journey, in the form of enlightenment, rebirth, death and evolution.  For example, I had completed a recent body of drawings, paintings and mixed media (ink and water color) portraying bell jars with mini worlds inside of them.  In one of my paintings, I dealt with rebirth.  The image was a black cut-out silhouette of a bell, mounted on top of white paper, with a detailed painting inside of the sihouetted bell jar.  I depicted a dead zebra at the bottom of the bell jar, with a man rising (being born) from the dead carcass.  From the man a group of colorful butterflies dance above him.  All of the species are moving in the direction of the top of the bell jar, which has a sprouting seed and a rainbow beaming from it.  This piece deals with the theme of rebirth and the concept that all dead things give back energy to the world.  It is the natural cycle of life.

I would say that I choose to depict the form as close to real as I can, but in surreal spiritual situations.