art · 2014
A Touching Gaze
A series of 1:1 watercolors of body fragments, traced and painted on translucent paper — an attempt to render a tactile, close-up gaze.
Watercolor on translucent paper · 2014
When I look at myself through my own eyes, or caress someone else’s body, I see the subject far closer than a mirror or a camera allows — as if examining a skin specimen under a microscope. Looking at a section sliced from a whole, we cannot help but imagine the whole. As viewers follow the numbered parts of a body, they piece the entire figure back together. By observing and drawing the subject this closely, over and over, I tried to render a tactile gaze.
Tracing the body
Each painting is a fragment of the body, yet through numbering and arrangement the whole can still be imagined. I place a film mount against the subject’s body and trace its frame with a pen, then draw that part at the same scale.
To give the sensation of transferring the very skin I was watching, I worked on translucent tracing paper and painted in thin, lightly layered watercolor.
Composing the fragments
