Galatea

This was a painting I did last semester during my independent study. I was required to paint something about the human body, and so I went with sort of my commentary on the hyper-sexualization and dehumanization of (particularly) women's bodies in media.

This took most of the semester, a couple of months of inside and outside of class work. I cobbled together a bunch of different reference and pieces to create this. The face is made from like four different people/features. My Prof. also helped out on some really cool ideas with this, like background color, which I think works really, really well. There were more things I wanted to do with this, particularly the heart, but I was: A. running out of time, B. had two more paintings to complete for that semester, and C. was really burnt out creatively at the end of this.

I get a lot of 'Woah' reactions from people on this one. One person was like 'It's really good but weird in an interesting', which is pretty much what I'm going for in this one. Straddling a line between 'ideal' beauty and a form that is unnerving or uncomfortable.


I was going to upload this a few months ago, but I honestly couldn't decide on name :/
So I went with Galatea. Yes, the Greek myth Galatea. But instead marrying her creator, this Galatea is going to kick their ass instead.

Also, the fact that Facebook prompted me to identify the face in the image makes me feel accomplished :3


Water-soluble oil paint on canvas.