Bodily Wallpaper

Abstract

Artist's statement: "Individual patches creating the wallpaper pattern are made of a collection of the organ-like motifs that reoccur throughout my work. By combining these anatomical shapes to create a lotus-like “stamp” I combine feminine decor with anatomy. This combination speaks to my own personal interests of neuroscience and studio art, and I hope this conversation grows in the future and extends to speak about the frustrations, expectations, and hard work of women in science fields. However, without the context of my body of work, these forms don’t immediately recall the body, and relies too heavily on the decorative. I feel like this ambiguity can be both a strength and a weakness and I hope to use it to my advantage in later pieces. The process of destroying and covering the meticulous base pattern with gold foil, paint drips, and mediums was a new experiment for me that I hope to continue to explore in my future works, and allow it to play into the meaning behind the piece rather than a decorative element. This piece was inspired by a feeling of infiltration and struggle, in which the expected (the domestic housewife) is then juxtaposed by something that 'doesn’t belong' (the elements of the body). While the process itself in its labor-intensiveness showed this struggle, and the paint treatments on top of this layer also play into this theme, I feel like the sense of uneasiness isn’t there. The bodily forms feel like they belong in this piece, and they don’t necessarily feel anatomical. In my later pieces, I want to set up this tension between appreciating a piece for its beauty while at the same time feeling like the components have forced themselves together. This becomes more complicated as conversations about the body and domesticity often become about sex, which isn’t the goal of my work. Rather, the goal is to talk about the awkwardness and difficulty of being a woman in science fields."

This is a digital photograph of Malerie McDowell's painting. It was submitted as an assignment in the spring 2016 Intermediate/Advanced Painting class taught by Professor Erin Harmon.