The Story Behind The Exhibitionist...

Every woman on the planet is enrolled in a beauty contest at birth. Opting out isn’t a choice, and it’s a contest we’re destined to lose.

 To be a young and lovely woman is to be celebrated, sought after and revered. To be an old and wrinkled female is to be useless, irrelevant...invisible.

The Exhibitionist is trying to ward off invisibility by baring her breasts. Suddenly all eyes are upon her. Her life is as public as life in a fishbowl. But the attention she gets isn’t quite the attention she’d hoped for. Rather than gaining recognition for the wonderful person she knows herself to be, she finds herself drowning in a prurient puddle of her own unfortunate making.

Although The Exhibitionist was born as a result of personal experience, the theme of the painting is universal and sublime. Everyone made of human flesh struggles with the disparity between the gaze of The Other and the gaze within.