I want to love my body but ...
My art captures my body dysphoria using only visual cues. Paint-thickened, wrinkled, scarred cloths display acid colored figures in a dark void. The materials used as skin turn from their skeletons, their stretcher bars. These skins hang vertically, forcing the viewer to measure their own bodies against these sagging, twisted forms. All of these gestures reference the intimate, painful relationship between mind and its perception of my body. My figures are often interrupted by bold lines of paint, rips, or tinfoil, disrupting the eye's path to create further feelings of wrongness. The sharp contrast between figure and void evoke disassociation between mind, body, and place in time and space. Marks left from stretcher bars and staples displace the "skins" from traditional ways of hanging art. In some paintings the surface is torn in an act of violence, at a point of lost control ripping cloth from stretcher, or in intentional slashing. Later I hastily tack the pieces together to recreate the image, referencing years of hate. I highlight both "male" and "female" sex characteristics, exploring the imperfect communication between my body, mind, and the gaze of loved ones and others.
--- K. RODEHEAVER
Shown in Byers Gallery December of 2017
