In 2018 the global wellness industry was worth $4.2 trillion annually, more than four times the size of the pharmaceuticals industry. As our planet hurtles towards total ecological collapse at our hands, people seem to be focusing more and more upon their own bodies. As species that have inhabited the planet for millions of years disappear en masse, we focus our sense of responsibility inward, honing our stress management skills and methods of self-care.
What does it mean to paint bodies in this context? And further, what does it mean to paint one's own body? Does it constitute the same sort of introspection in the face of depletion that 'wellness' does? When this question arose in my mind, my first impulse was to charge painting with complicity in this cosy cocoon of denial that we are so invested in spinning. And it is complicit. Painting also, however, operates on people's subjecthood. When a painter produces a body, something pours out of the unconscious and stares back. It's not relaxing or reassuring.
In this body of work, the metaphorical potential of the female body in particular is explored: as a site at once open and engulfing; as an analogue for the tight loops of self-conscious critique that take place on social media; as a space becoming what it always was; as a forum for thought and argument that fails to account for the mind attached to that body.
When someone paints, they paint with their body, and in this moment they ask themselves to inhabit their body fully, to recognise it. If in turn the body serves as subject matter, the vulnerability of this moment is carried forth on another register. Inhabiting one's body in order to carry out a subjective outpouring is, perhaps paradoxically, a useful means to help us find a way outside of ourselves. At present the idea of this is, for me, connected to motherhood, since bringing another human into the world also necessitates a collision of inhabiting one's body anew, a subjective outpouring and moving outside oneself - giving the self over to the interests of another who you made, and then you meet.
Image credit: Damian Griffiths
