Clarity Haynes is among the
new members who recently joined tART, so this visit was a nice opportunity for
me to get to know her and her work better. Her studio space in Brooklyn is
filled with images of women’s bodies – drawings and paintings. Some of the paintings are much larger than
life size. Only a specific portion of
each woman’s body is depicted: the unclothed breasts, framed by chin and
waistline. She started this “Breast
Portrait Project” in 1998, making pastel drawings at women’s festivals – a
healing environment where some women chose to walk topless. She has also conducted workshops with women,
using art as a means of self acceptance and appreciation regarding the body. The invested persistence and evolution of
this project show in the nuances of Clarity’s work. There have been gaps as long as five years
where she did not work on it, and the largest canvases – among my favorites – are
a recent step.
I asked Clarity why she
doesn’t include her subjects’ faces and she told me that “when you have a face,
it becomes about the face”, which is “more narrative, in another way.” Speaking
with Clarity and viewing this work, it is clear how central a woman’s breasts
are to her body image – and how the depictions of naked breasts that we are
used to seeing collectively – in Western art history and popular culture - affect
our own self image. In Clarity’s
paintings and drawings, I see the female body in all its beautifully complex realness
and variety – not the photoshopped, commercialized, stringently edited versions
that are ubiquitous and practically unavoidable. Clarity is particularly
interested in affirming women’s bodies as they age, and challenging rigid ideas
of “ideal” size, shape, skin tone and texture.
Something that really struck me is that, though this project – in its
current iteration - is very much about painting, it is also participatory. Women aren’t just static “models”. She maintains a book where the women write
down their thoughts on their own relationship with their body – alongside their
photo. I loved going through this book. Though the drawings and paintings stand on
their own, it added rich layers to my experience of them.
The work I am choosing for
tART’s “Collectively Assembled “ show is the breast portrait of Roxanne, a very
muscular bodybuilder. This painting
raises so many important questions about our assumptions on race, gender, and
iconic imagery. It led to some wonderfully
strong conversation during our studio visit.
Particularly after I read Roxanne’s entry in Clarity’s book, I knew this
was the painting for the show – and I’ve asked Clarity to include Roxanne’s writing
and photo in the gallery.
