Artist Statement

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For years my drawings and paintings have been concerned with the representation of the human body. Not “The Nude” which is an art form, but the specific body that evidences the gravity and scars of time and experience—a life lived in mutable corporeal flesh. The images often explore the relationship between the worlds of discourse and appearance, the body and the language surrounding it. I think that words hang in the air and push
against our bodies—the rectitude of words, the shiftiness of flesh. Language is palpable whether physically present in the work, i.e., the drawings, or referenced in the image/title, i.e., the paintings. The position of the body becomes its own language, many positions or movements forming a word or sentence, in the same way that an “O” is a letter form and a sound and part of a word.

Because of the strong physical presence that I want in the work, my process has become increasingly focused and labor-intensive. Each painting evolves slowly—the bodies crawled over inch by inch, built up and carved out with many layers of impasto and glaze. The drawing process is subtractive. The paper is heavily gessoed (3-4 layers), [and] then the surface is blackened with charcoal (or pastel). White is pulled out of the dark by sanding off the charcoal so that the bodies become luminous, both receivers and emitters of light.

The work never feels finished. I revisit it often. There is something for me about the tortoisepaced process of representing beauty, our own beauty, that feels like a radical act. Familiarity breeds redemption.

- Bailey Doogan (2001)