Relationship Triptych

The following is an email conversation I've been having with Dr. Kay Wagner (aka Captain Marvel...personal joke) about the work. She has some really excellent points about the composition for the Relationship Cycle Triptych piece Disconnect... I wish I'd shown her things earlier & I may have changed the entire body of work. My responses are in italics....

I responded strongly to your Relationship Triptych. I can’t tell you how much I admire your courage in putting your work “out there” for public criticism. I took your request for comment very seriously and wanted to send it directly to you, I would love to get your response to what I have written. Kay, thank you so much for responding! I take your comments very seriously as well. Asking for comments & putting myself out there so to speak is definitely out of my comfort zone as well. I’m not sure I would ever have done such a thing if I hadn’t been required to... it is scary. You put your soul into your work & I am generally very private about it.

The concept you have chosen is daring and difficult. It requires a depth of feeling and self-exposure that many will not have the guts for. Thank you. It is easier when you don’t show it to many people. Your work has an authentic emotional content and excellent feel for composition. This is a big compliment from you... I love your photographs. Your use of color is a very compelling element. Your forms are sculptural, soft in the first and hard in the second image. I love the cubist treatment of the newspaper in the last versions of the first image. I don’t think the drapery effect of the second image works; it seems distracting. I think the horizon line is a problem in the last image. I agree. The drapery is definitely going in the next version for just this reason as you can see on the new sketches.

Depictions of human sexuality, or nudes in general, have a major pitfall:

How do we avoid objectifying the human body, depicting each individual in his or her subjective reality, uniqueness and idiosyncrasy? Both classical nudes and modern pinups share this pitfall. The human beings they depicting are objects and as such don’t demand our respect. This is so true. I read a great deal about this during my research phase... often in an attempt to fight male portrayals of the female form as an object to be gazed at female artist are portraying themselves... studying who they are & what they are by completing figurative work of their own. Here the physical imperfection piece comes into play (as I showed with Disconnect... a real woman & man once the blinders were off after the Intensity phase.) I believe that in many ways you have avoided objectifying the figures in your Triptych, though a little less physical perfection might make this stronger. To complicate matters more often the more abstract a figure is the more it becomes objectified (see some of Picasso’s cubist nudes).

In the first panel the composition is strong and the colors are especially right in the second version of the first panel, darker shadows and more visceral. The woman’s eyes are disturbing in that they seem calm or almost bored This was in an attempt to make the image less crude... she is more motherly, consumed with him & not her own pleasure.; it maybe better not to see them at all.

In the second panel, I would love to see the figures in the same positions but with the woman in front with empty arms, the man in back. Some slight movement of one of the women legs or feet to make the image less overtly sexual. This would also serve to make all the panels vertical. I like the warm colors in the first, would like to see neutral colors dominate the second and a balance of warm, cool and neutral in the third.

It might be interesting to have the third image the same as the second , with subtle shift in the limb placement. Or how about have the male figure facing the viewer in a mirror image of his current position or with his arms in the same position as hers are in the first and second. The male face would probably need to be hidden. Oh Kay! I wished I’d gotten comments from you in the thumbnail, compositional stage! These are excellent ideas that I may use for future works. The repetition of the female figure is a splendid idea...

I like the newspaper collage background very much, especially when you tint it with the images dominant color. The text is so symbolic. It adds so much to what defines & shapes our definitions of how relationships are supposed to be... we want what we are told to want. Is our happiness based on societal definitions or our own?

I have found that visual images must be conceptually deep and visually complex before I am able to make substantial comments. Your work qualifies on both accounts. I can not thank you enough for taking the time to do this.