Body Art
I found an old sketchbook. It was sitting in a box in the corner of the little unheated attic that I call my studio. It’s from six years ago, which may not sound like a long time ago to you, but that’s over a quarter of my life. My name, written in paint pen, adorns the spine of the book. Page after page is filled with copied sketches from Pinterest, fan art for every pop star I loved at the time, and notes from my high school art class.
“What is art?” read the gel pen bubble letters.
What a good question. What is art?
The first time I went to an art museum was in the fourth grade. I walked eagerly through the perfectly-lit, echo-y halls in my required red sweater vest and tragic khaki skort. We were supposed to be quiet, stay in line, and not touch anything—every nine year old’s dream. The tour guide gestured to paintings of Mary and Jesus and angels, and the twelve disciples. Nothing new to me. Occasionally, though, there would be a nude figure. To my Sunday-school attending self, this was shocking. Nudity is a sin. I just shook my head. If I was an artist, I thought to myself, I would know better. I wouldn’t make art that would send me to hell.
I turn a page in the newly found sketchbook to see the early stages of a figure study. Fabric drapes over the figure, hiding any body parts that could be deemed “private.” The fabric is drawn pretty poorly, I should add. To this day I can’t draw fabric well. I gaze at the protective fabric that my younger hand drew. Behind the fabric lived the skin that would get me in trouble. It would deem me a whore and send me to hell. Even with the poorly drawn fabric scribbled over the controversial skin, I know my younger self had feared condemnation for drawings like these. Someone might ask why a good little girl like me was so fascinated by the body. My answer to that question now would be the same as my answer then: how could you not be?
As complex and fascinating as the human body is in general, something about drawing girls specifically has always felt right to me. As a child, I drew fashion models and princesses. I drew the imaginary characters that lived in my head. I couldn’t help it; they just flowed out from the end of my pen. The minuscule features of girls captivated me then, and still do now. I like drawing the curves of their hips and the roundness of their jaws. In my childhood sketchbooks, I would practice, again and again, drawing pairs of plump lips, sometimes with a thin watercolor wash of red. In the margins of my history and literature notes I studied the slopes and angles of the calf meeting the thigh. I like drawing girls because they are beautiful. But being a girl myself, they say it’s a sin to find girls as beautiful as I do—especially if I paint them with their clothes off.
It wasn’t until I was seventeen that I learned about the clitoris. I was shocked and confused to learn that women have a body part that allows us to experience pleasure. Up until that point, I thought that orgasms belonged to men and that, at least to some extent, women’s bodies did too. Plus, I spent all of elementary and high school at private Christian schools where teaching abstinence was considered a suitable alternative to sex education. My actual sex education came from my friends. During a girl’s night, we all sat in a circle while my adventurous, pink-haired friend Erin drew a diagram. She pointed out parts of the body that I didn’t know existed. They were parts that I thought were supposed to be covered and hidden. They were parts I never knew of when I drew the girls that lived in my head. They were parts that made them more powerful somehow. Parts that made me powerful somehow.
Soon after the clitoris revelation, I was working in the art room in my required black sweater vest and horrid purple plaid skirt while some kid I barely knew was gossiping. “I heard that the AP art kids are getting suspended for drawing naked people.” It’s true that I and the other girls in the AP art class had developed a bit of a pattern of portraying nudity in our work. I guess we were in our rebellious feminine liberation phase. How could we not be after learning about the power of the clitoris? Apparently, the principal now knew about our so-called pornographic art and was not very happy. What would he do if parents found out that good Christian girls were painting boobs? The scandal of it!
Good Christian girls should not draw naked people. Good Christian girls should not be entranced by other girls’ bodies. Good Christian girls should not talk about sex or feel desire or celebrate their bodies. Maybe good Christian girls shouldn’t be artists then, I thought to myself. Maybe I’m not a good Christian girl at all. I stood in front of my easel feeling defeated, looking at the girl on my canvas that the principal wanted to censor. As if he hadn’t censored my body enough already with this stupid suffocating sweater vest.
The painting I was working on that day is in my studio now. The abstract female figure (vagina, clitoris, and all) brought to life in shades of pink, green, and golden watches over me from the wall. She is made up of complex passion and desire. She isn’t hiding from herself or anyone else. I painted the girl that I wanted to be. That painting hung in my high school show as well. Because it was determined to be art after all. A conversation took place between my art teacher and the principal. I don’t know what she said to him, but what she said to me was that art is curiosity and expression. It’s an opportunity to explore the world around me and the world inside my head. Something like that couldn’t be filtered. Plus, none of the nudity was overtly sexual. So the principal really didn’t have an argument.
I’ve had a complicated relationship with my body for a long time. There were so many people around me putting rules and regulations on it, telling me to hide it in tacky, unflattering khaki skorts and purple plaid skirts and sweater vests. They preached that my body would be worth more if it was pure. Whatever that meant. Then there were the men following me around and catcalling me, commenting on the body of mine that I barely even knew. Boys calling me fat, calling me a prude. Girls calling me fat, calling me a slut. I didn’t even know my body. I didn’t want to look at it and add to the noise.
There’s a newer sketchbook in my attic with some nude figure studies from a few weeks ago. They’re of me. I forced myself to look at my body, to spend time noticing and appreciating it. I let the discomfort rise and fall as I gave myself permission to not look away. I had to notice the folds of my stomach and the dimples on my back, features that I’ve spent many years now trying to mask. I also had to pay attention to features I never knew I had. Like the parts of my back where my spine peeks through the skin. Like the tufts of curls on the nape of my neck. It all looked a lot like art to me.
There’s a Cesar Cruz quote that goes, “Art is meant to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed.” It’s scribbled in the old sketchbook as an answer to the initial question. In the places I’ve felt broken or confused, art has been a comfort. In front of a canvas, I can confront pain or heartbreak or injustice or even myself, no matter how uncomfortable it makes anyone else. In creating and sharing how I feel through art, I’ve found that I’m not the only one who’s felt disturbed. I’m not the only one who’s felt like a stranger to my body or who has felt confined by Christian culture. I’ve found girls longing to feel at home in the skin they’re in. I hope they know that they are art.
Claire Gurley is a painter living and working in Nashville, Tennessee. She is focused on the intersection of color, symbolism, and emotion. Painting is the avenue through which she communicates, processes, and empathizes, all in the quest of making herself and the world just a little bit better.
