Femmine
by Wendy Artin
November 1st – December 11th, 2003
Femmine, Artin ́s fourth annual exhibition at Gurari, features her most personal work yet. In Italian "femmine" means "female," and the show is a passionate, patient, and intimate celebration of just that: of what it is to be female, to be a woman artist viewing a woman ́s body during a very special time in the artist ́s life.
Most of the pictures in the show were made during the nine months Artin was pregnant with her daughter, Lily, who was born in Rome on January 22, 2002. Recognizing that this would be an unusual period for her both professionally and personally, Artin wanted to find a way to paint the experience of Lily ́s gestation. "At first I thought I would do a series of self-portraits, documenting the change in my body as I became more and more pregnant," she explains. "But painting yourself in the mirror is limited and physically tiring."
"Instead I found myself painting my models with an unprecedented zeal, as though they were self- portraits. The models and I had a special rapport during Lily ́s pregnancy, a very intense period of working together," Artin recalls. "I knew that my time was limited. Each day all of my energy and concentration would come pouring out during the hours in the studio." The poses were longer than in the past, twenty or thirty minutes each. Artin worked on a printmaking paper that is extremely smooth, thick and absorbent, paper that stays wet without pooling. The paintings have soft, malleable shadows. They are at once more delicate and more focused than in her previous work.
Because of the unusually intense nature of this collaboration Artin asked the models to speak directly about the experience of modeling during this period.
Laura Riccoli, an actress, described how Artin ́s paintings changed her way of seeing: "To pose for Wendy is a strange and beautiful revelation of the form that light takes on a person." Artin ́s pregnancy, Riccoli felt, introduced a "heightened accuracy into her drawing, in the way she gathered the details and curves of bodies that seem to be waiting for something larger than themselves. Even common poses were different, as though the very concept of femininity had become more rich, more ample."
Tamara Bartolini, another actress, likened posing for Artin to engaging in a dialogue between two actors on stage. "Only in the studio the dialogue is made not of words but of looks, of pauses, of silences. The lines of my body search for the light, for the feeling that will make them different and new to Wendy ́s eyes, hands, and paper."
"It is a profound exchange," she said, adding that the period in which Artin was pregnant was "the most intense experience I have had as a model. That period was marked by waiting: waiting for the life that was taking form inside Wendy, waiting for the painting to emerge on the paper."
Artin herself says that results of all this waiting-50 odd paintings in all-are, in essence, a diary of her baby daughter ́s development: "While I could do paintings of the same poses, with the same models and the same light, I could never make these pictures again. "