Thursday, September 3, 2009

Advanced Painting and My Feminist Philosophies

I am PUMPED PUMPED PUMPED for my advanced painting course. I had the first class this morning. It's a small studio class, with only 7 other women. I think it is going to be an incredible learning experience, as well as a convenient time for exploration of self.

My teacher wants us to develop ideas about where our paintings will take us throughout the semester. Naturally, my first thoughts were to center my pieces around feminism and my feminist philosophy.
For my first painting I am going to do an exploration on the very huge and very bizarre issue of WHY someone else gets to decide what women do with their bodies.

What makes it bizarre is that those "someone elses" are generally older white males who are not having children anytime soon and are MALES. These are the people suggesting and enforcing laws that prevent young women from exercising their personal rights. Totally gross and scary. Ouch.

In the painting I am going to do my best to allude to something uterine and possibly the idea of woman as just a "carrier" who is being dehumanized. The latter might be reserved for a second painting however, because that is its own separate issue.

Anyway, I think that this is going to be GREAT GREAT OPPORTUNITY for me to learn something about myself, learn a lot about other people, and really solidify how I feel about most things concerning feminism and the right to choice.

WORD.

Anyway-- I'd like all of your opinions and suggestions on ways to approach these ideas.

As a general list, I've written down certain things that I would like to create a visual "conversation" about. Such as my own feelings on pregnancy, the idea of overpopulation and the wrongs of having too many children, an exploration of what life is and who deserves to be honored in life, SOMETHING about Gray's Anatomy and approaching the uterus/fetus/embryo from a strictly scientific standpoint.

Basically: CHOICE.

What are ya'll thinking?? Criticisms or applaud are welcome. SERIOUSLY. If my paintings could also convey the feelings of others that would be a wonder...
;)

endpost.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You want to champion a woman's ability to choose, but you don't want her to be able to choose how many children she has?

Malthus was an old white male who was proven wrong over 200 years ago. It's time to get with the 21st century.

sketchsteph said...

No, by the wrongs of having too many children I did not mean that women should not be able to choose how many children she has.
I should have clarified, but what I meant by it was that every woman needs to be educated on the responsibilities of having many children. Every person for that matter. Sometimes, a woman ends up having tons of kids not because she wants to but because she is not educated in using contraceptions. Oftentimes, women who are uneducated in this way do not have the means to support their children. In cases such as those, I consider that there are too many children. As in, too many to be able to support and take care of and keep healthy.

I do not share Malthus' beliefs on discouraging women from having children or population control, which I'm sure is obvious in reading my blog.