FEMALE NUDE

Our family started a tradition a few years ago regarding the giving of gifts at Christmas. Everyone in the family draws the name of someone else in the family. The 'rules' are that you must make the gift, the cost should be under $25 and of course it should be accompanied by a song or poem or in my case a series of bad rhymes. We all of course cheat and bend the rules but the end result is always so lovely. This is a picture my brother painted and gave to me. I LOVE IT!

Artist's Explanation of the "Female Nude"

This piece questions the validity of the all-too-common portrayal of the aesthetics in nature known as the traditional or historical landscape. No longer subject to the raw power of nature through the advancement of technology (central heating, air conditioners) many artists historically (e.g. Group of Seven, Tom Thompson) have over emphasized and "objectified" its beauty. This over-simplification of beauty is also historically common in the portrayal of the female nude, conveying only the perfect form, full of grace and poise. It is the intention of this piece to distract the viewer with the text on the canvas, in order to draw attention to this parrallel which challenges the function of the historical landscape painting. In the modern world a great portion of humanity has created distance between itself and nature, only to be reminded of its existence by "prettied pictures". At least three perspectives of nature are being ignored in this process. 1) nature is being destroyed by humanity by pollution and over consumtion as resources leaving it ugly and polluted 2) nature is mundane, boreal forests are acres of rocks and trees 3) nature is harsh, cold and painful. The beautiful landscape painting is a product of a pseudo-nostalgia with nature that ignores these other perspectives. My personal experience of nature through treeplanting may have ignited this need for expressing the shortcomings of the traditional landscape painting :o)