Little Coats That Cover
Coats cover and protect. They signify where the body ends and the outside begins. When you wear a coat you are protected from the harsh elements, creating a layer between the inside and the outside.
As a child getting a new coat usually corresponded with the changing seasons: snow suits, wool blazers, raincoats. Every Easter my Mom would make me a new dress with matching coat or cape. I loved all the possibilities - tweed, plaid, satin lined, fur trimmed, big buttons, frog clasps, toggles, snaps, zippers, pompoms, fringe, pleats, and always lots of pockets. Putting on a coat enabled me to instantly focus attention upon the boundaries or limits of my own body. Coats made me feel safe and sound and kept me warm and dry. In later years coats still cover but boundaries are not as clean and simple.
I prefer to draw with graphite and charcoal and to paint with oils on canvas because I can layer and erase, super-imposing images to suggest memory and traces of the past. This allows me to describe a history, telling a layered story of covering and uncovering sometimes enclosing but never completely hiding the body beneath.
Coats cover and protect. They signify where the body ends and the outside begins. When you wear a coat you are protected from the harsh elements, creating a layer between the inside and the outside.
As a child getting a new coat usually corresponded with the changing seasons: snow suits, wool blazers, raincoats. Every Easter my Mom would make me a new dress with matching coat or cape. I loved all the possibilities - tweed, plaid, satin lined, fur trimmed, big buttons, frog clasps, toggles, snaps, zippers, pompoms, fringe, pleats, and always lots of pockets. Putting on a coat enabled me to instantly focus attention upon the boundaries or limits of my own body. Coats made me feel safe and sound and kept me warm and dry. In later years coats still cover but boundaries are not as clean and simple.
I prefer to draw with graphite and charcoal and to paint with oils on canvas because I can layer and erase, super-imposing images to suggest memory and traces of the past. This allows me to describe a history, telling a layered story of covering and uncovering sometimes enclosing but never completely hiding the body beneath.