(2018-present)

Small canvases.
The body raw.
Fragmented, exposed.
Physicality, sexuality, attitude.
Forms that gather.
Forms that break.
Spirit moving through flesh.
The inner world, caught on the surface.

– Thanks to Alla Broeksmit for her poetic words

The first mini torso (7” x 5”) was painted to use up oil paint left over from work on a large canvas. The paintings have a solid color background on which the figure materializes through expressive mark-making with palette knives. Created while looking at the same 7-9 photographs, they depict multiple iterations of women’s physicality, sexuality, attitude and inner world.

There’s tension between the raw and fragmented form of the body as a vessel, and the spirit it contains and embodies. The symmetry of the two halves which form the body is depicted as coming together and disintegrating at the same time.

In yoga theory, the back side of the body is where the subconscious is expressed and resides. The women in these paintings are exposed to our probing gaze, and may or may not be aware of it. That is their source of vulnerability, and power.