Hi everyone! I’ve been so busy getting everything ready for the exhibition that is now two weeks away!
It’s interesting how much my practice is starting to transform. I’m starting to loosen up my painting rendering and diving into the still life.
My recent still life pieces have been a “love letter” to Florida. The spirit of Florida is wild and untamed. It’s a state known for partying, sex, lust, drag, and the final place of “rest” aka the American retirement. However with recent book bans, abortion laws, and right extremism its become a state known for its ever changing and more controlling laws. It’s an interesting place of juxtaposition and contrast that capitalizes on these othered bodies to sell the idea of paradise, but also tries to control them.
I’m using Florida’s landscape of desire and lust to portray the body as another object that interweaves the fabric of the American idea of “paradise”. Using found corporal objects from estate sales and typical tropical fruits that are abundant here, I suggest the body is “found” within these objects and use a vanity mirror to crop and suggest that my own body is also an object.
This ties into my practice as I play with the dichotomy of the female form seen as a political landscape needing to be controlled and the power of a woman’s bodily agency. I’ll share more of my work soon as I am also studying more “objects” of Florida and am looking into painting sand(not with sand but of sand).
