"People often say that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder,' and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you are the beholder. This empowers us to find beauty in places where others have not dared to look, including inside ourselves." - Selma Hayek When I started painting dresses, I was painting just that..... dresses. The focus was a study in creating texture, mixing, and blending colours. I was looking at the details; the leaves not the forest. I would sit and paint 10 dresses in a sitting just to play at those elements. But something happened at one point. Women began to appear within the dresses. The study expanded beyond the dress to encompass the women within. I began to see them as complete people. My daughter asked me at one point, "How old is that lady? How about that one? That one?" I knew the answer to each of her questions and I realized that I had begun painting more than just the dress. These were women. They were strong, defiant, admirable, and they were unique. It wasn't the same model in a hundred dresses. They weren't even all models. They all held confidence regardless of their proportions; whether swan necked or broad shouldered. And when women saw these paintings, they reacted. They were seeing the strength, the possibility, the glamour. So I began painting more. Bigger, bolder, more colorful and more unique.
Finding beauty in each form keeps me passionate about these women. My Women of Strength. |
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November 2019
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