Vandalism of the Worshipped

These were the begining of my mad expedition into advertising. Although they came first, on reflection, I think that it feels like I should have produced them after working in the industry. It is a kind of disillusioned response to the idea of selling beauty and seducing people into purchasing through image.

I created the paintings from a series of photographs that I took. At the time, I didn't have anyone to use in the photographs so I just used myself. I set up a photoshoot in my bathroom and collected every beauty product I could find that I owned, from bubble bath, to waxing strips, to face masks, to foundation and I piled them all in the bathroom and dotted candles all around amongst them so the whole room became almost a shrine to the ritual of beautifying oneself. After I got the photographs back, I decided to produce a series of paintings from the shots. I painted the girls on the canvas but I mixed the oil paint with wax so that the skin was really craggy and kinda repulsive (totally the opposite to the airbrushed beauties that you see adorning the covers of magazines and on film). The background shrine area, I painted really flat with enamel gloss paint, perfect, smooth and shiney. I wanted this to act as a glossy veneer that exists in the world of manufacturing and media, I used colours similar to that in pop art, big and bold and shouting,' buy me, buy me'. In comparison to the natural fleshy tones of the girls body, it all almost seems totally out of place as there is a not only a massive contrast between the textures but the colour palette too. One or the other seems almost super imposed. Within the barriers of the painting, the smooth glossy back ground full of products represents the idealised, and the craggy imperfect skin of the model, the real. It is a reflection on the whole process that goes into making images that want to sell product and identities to women. I set out the shoot so that it was like a classic photo shoot with the emphasis on the girl looking glamorous and sexy and then I took my paints and defaced this ideal. I wanted to show this unattainable, fake beauty up for what it really is.