body/text project
 
 
40x50 inches each, mixed-media drawings
Anne Beidler, Body/Text Drawings

    These 40x50 inch, mixed-media drawings are part of a multi-year project of evolving work titled, Body/Text.  These images
    are intended transcend specific age and reveal the constant, internal and evolving self found in the private space of thought,
    body and the personal. The women’s bodies in each piece are just over life size and can be hung low on the wall to meet
    the viewer face-to-face.  Text is hand drawn or applied using xerox transfer printing.  

    The images include repetitive phrases that read like private thoughts.  The viewer is invited to engage in an intense visual
    dialogue with the woman's sense-of-self in these images.  The texts slow down the gaze of the viewer and create a veil of
    thoughts on the body.  The presence of the nude body also becomes a metaphor for the intimacy of self revealed in the text.

    I have searched for an image that conveyed essential woman, not determined by notions of age or physical beauty.
    Variations on a simple crouch or squat seemed most compelling.  It is a stance of our daily life functions of giving birth, of
    elimination and of bathing.  This simple visual metaphor seems an appropriate starting point for reclaiming images of
    ourselves.