By the time I start this piece, a few things from untitled_001 have made themselves quite evident. Drawing from personal experience is a must, yet directly depicting individuals feels too much like a breach of trust. I didn’t think this would affect me as profoundly as it did, as much as I still stand by untitled_001 (as a deeply personal and cathartic piece). Repeated viewing comes with a nagging sensation of betrayal; like discovering the awkward truth behind your favourite break-up song, how this can dull the personal connection you’ve made, leaving you feeling like you’re stuck in a private moment between two former lovers and you don’t know where to look.

With untitled_002 [02:28AM], I made a conscious decision to keep the recalled moments true, but use alternative reference material for the subject. This was such a good move, freeing me up not to worry about likeness (which if I got right would only leave me feeling even more guilty). Plus, now I can move forward using whatever reference I think fits the moment, maybe I can use my life drawing studies. I like to think of this like those legal statements that open movies and books: “The events are real, only the names have been changed to protect the innocent…”

Nudity = Intimacy

Another hurdle I’ve overcome is dissolving the male gaze, a challenge I face in my work.  For me, nudity often represents intimacy. It’s easy to forget the significance of two people seeing each other naked for the first time;  it’s an act of vulnerability. However, we have plenty of female nudes in art history, especially banal ones.   I like this challenge; tackling nudity in a non salacious fashion.

In the early stages of this painting, I wanted to create a cohesive form from sections of glimpsed body parts, like a sculpture made from an arm, torso and turned-away head.  While the results were intriguing, I couldn’t resolve the form without it looking like bad anatomy.  This concept of closely viewed body sections forming a whole resonates with me, even with aphantasia (or perhaps because of it).  Aphantasia has me rejecting lens-based depictions of memory, my memory of a person isn’t like a soft-focus lens. When Directors / DPs tight crop a human figure to convey intimacy this feels closer to my sense of memory. Abstract expressionist paintings do more for my sense of recollection – the notion of colour as emotion. The introduction of synaptic marks (the term I use for my dynamic, structural marks) allowed me to visually separate the anatomy just enough to piece together the figure.