The gravity of the body occurs to me in my almost 7 decade frame. Its weight and what it might mean.
Studying the figure began in my teens with life drawing that continued into university, art college then teaching.
When asked to look at the female figure eventually I drew eyes replacing nipples, irises and roses as vaginas. Representing the female body was politic and poetic five decades ago.
In pandemic times the focus on our bodies is paramount. I find myself pondering how now to represent the figure from which I with-drew.
Past days drawing cadavers and bones in anatomy class brought me into the subcutaneous body’s insults, wounds and diseases.
Now when I look it’s the skin I see and what it wears. It can represent the intensity of bodily love, the body giving birth, the end of the body through age.
Back to the problematics of it. Jeanette Winterson’s texts have crept in subcutaneously and I credit their value to this body of work.