Body Art and Imperfections
‘I’m in love with the shape of you’ sang Ed Sheeran. I agree wholeheartedly. I love scars, marks, freckles, wrinkles, veins… And yet I find myself working in a field that views these as something to be rid of.
I started body painting by using these markings as way to read a persons body, to find the shapes it was made of, the contours, the highlights, the shadows, and I would draw that person with colours and patterns.
It’s not for me to judge whether someone should ‘love their imperfections’ or want to get rid of them, I’m just grateful I can use what is natural to me – caring and drawing on bodies – in a combined way to help people.
Working on the body
It’s the medium of the body that I love. Working on a living breathing form that changes and morphs continually, that teaches you that you will never know it all, that keeps your interest alive, and enables you to help, to advise, to care and to support in the only way you know how.
Written on the body
Words that can convey
Letters filled with meaning
Of what you never say.
The touch as you stroke me
Draw me with your mind
Imagine me in feelings
Words to which we bind.
The tender joy of using
That in which you own
The surface as my canvas
Where all my thoughts have grown.
Rae Denman 1999
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