artist of the week :: jane maxwell

we are all products of our consumer culture.





we talked in drawing 2 last week about this a good amount during our contemporary artist presentation. i thought this artist further represented the ideas we talked about regarding body image and consumer culture.


this is jane maxwell's artist statement, taken from her website:

Feminine silhouettes are central icons in this work examining contemporary women and body image.

From movies and television, to magazines and billboards, we are inundated with representations of the perfect figure. This art deconstructs the ideal, by depicting women who have been stripped of fashion and airbrushing--and are shaped instead from a layering of vintage produce crate labels, Hollywood posters, and related ephemera.

This work often depicts women in conversation, comparison or repetition, underscoring the role female camaraderie and competition play in the ideal body quest, and making a statement about our culture's insistence on uniformity.

Each canvas is the result of many hours of labor--layering, sanding, building up and scraping back. Layers are created using a special technique with hot melted beeswax. The most recent work is finished with layers of high-gloss resin.