Sam, 2018, oil on canvas, 33" x 28"
Nora Antisana, 2018, oil on canvas, 28" x 33"
Anastatia Double Weave, 2018, oil on canvas, 33" x 28"
Meg with Marsden Peony, 2018, acrylic on unstretched canvas, 96" x 69"
Pamela in her Poetry Gown, 2018, oil on canvas, 16.5" x 13.5"
Morris Reading Poetry, 2018, oil on canvas, 16.5" x 13.5"
C, 2018, oil on canvas, 16.5" x 13.5"
Anastatia's Trousers, 2018, oil on canvas, 90" x 54"
Aimee and Heath, 2018, oil on canvas, 48" x 48"
The New Brag exhibition, Saint Mary's College, Moreau Gallery, 2019
The New Brag
Series of 13 oil paintings on canvas, ranging in size from 16.5” x 13.5” to 90” x 54”, 2018
“…I am putting my proud American boast right here with the others.”
from The Language of the Brag
by Sharon Olds
In her poem, The Language of the Brag, Sharon Olds lays down her brag of her fullest self “pushing the new person out.” One person making another. That’s what we do, pregnant or not. Olds claims her brag for this heroic, but mostly invisible, act that women perform. I began looking for other brag moments that may be overlooked and I found them in the digital self-portraits (“selfies”) of the people who inspired The New Brag series of paintings. As with Olds, I am reclaiming the word “brag” and it’s definition of being “full of oneself” as a positive and necessary stance for myself and all marginalized people in a deeply misogynist, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, and patriarchal world.
Painting myself and the other subjects in The New Brag series is a way of being with each one of us for that time as a particular kind of witness. There is touch involved. It’s wet. I stay for hours. And when I’m done, each one is here with me and with each other. Gathered. All looking directly. Seeing me, seeing each other. A community of witnesses. As I constitute these beings in paintings on canvas, I am constituted as a painter.
In this work, I am exploring visibility and co-constitution as redemptive, political acts.