The Glorious Way She Moves
The Glorious Way She Moves explores the fullness and depth of the female form from youthful innocence to glorious maturity. I paint individual women that I know, know of, or that I meet. These dynamic, moving portraits illustrate the exuberance and individuality of each muse I celebrate, capturing the poise and spirit by which they pay homage to the legacy of generations of women who came before them. These portraits symbolically exemplify the self-esteem that women exude as they move through their lives and the world.
In my process, I video record each woman dancing, then jump to the film’s individual frames, using them to help me expose and capture my subjects’ unique character and individuality. During their dance, I specifically look for physical and expressive nuances my subjects demonstrate, then use these individual signature movements to reveal each subjects' aesthetic. I paint whole-body multiple-image portraits of women from diverse age groups and economic backgrounds, bringing them into a magnified view that recognizes them as multi-faceted human beings. I work intuitively combining watercolor, acrylic, stencils, collage, and other mediums to illustrate the individuality of each of my subjects. By doing this I experience a connection to their beauty without stereotyping. It is that connection I share in my work.
As an artist of mixed Hispanic and Black ancestry, respecting all races, ethnicities and cultural heritages is important to my daily lived experience, and I strive to represent this in my work. And as a woman, I feel an obligation to use my artistic practice to provide a platform to celebrate women who are actively engaged in cultural and civic life; for their collective concerns and wishes to build on the progress towards a diverse and thriving community; to be heard and acknowledged; to inspire other women and other people.
My desire to create this work is personal, as I and other women encounter the unbelievable setbacks to women rights that are occurring today. Universally, women have the same needs and wants, yet there are systems that are working hard not only to take away our rights, but to separate us from one another and to silo us in ethnic and racial groups, because this weakens our voices and our power to advocate for ourselves and for each other. I realize that the changes that are occurring are palpable and oppressive, and I am sometimes overcome with feelings of stress and despair in myself and for my sisterhood of women. I want to make portraits that will uplift us and connect us to our personal joy because through joy, we find our power which can give us hope; through joy, we connect to our resilience, our ability to persevere and our ability to connect to one another; and through joy, we tap into the strength needed to move forward together and reclaim hard won freedoms to control our own lives, that are being taken from us.
By creating a multi-sensory experience, using the vitality of the portraits and the audio recordings, I work to provide the audience a conduit to make individual connections. The women I paint are artists, as teachers, in technology, in medicine, in business, and often simultaneously are mothers, caregivers, and even students. They can inspire us through their hopes, life passions and achievements, by the way they overcome personal struggles, and through their self-healing practices. My goal is to foster feelings of understanding, appreciation and solidarity between the women who are my muses I have painted to provide individuals that they can relate to and imagine their own possibilities through. Viewers will see examples of women demonstrating that joy and strength are possible even in the most challenging of times.