Here it is (finally)! After weeks of work and having to bring this one home (I'm starting to sense a pattern here, and my next project is even bigger...oh boy), it's finally finished, and it's my favorite piece I've made all year. I think that's partially to do with the beginning of it - I typically have a lot of trouble coming up with ideas for my next project, but for some reason the idea for this one (women are shamed both for being virgins and for having sex lives, thus the title of "Shame") came to me easily. I still took a while to do it, but I blame that on my slower process rather than any lack of inspiration.
While I was in the planning stages, I added onto my main content of shaming women. I had wanted to make my art more personal (my last few projects had been focused on sexual assault, a fate I have fortunately never experienced, and I wanted to make art about my own experience to some extent), and an opportunity had presented itself the Friday before we started working on this project: I began dating someone. Being the romantic that I am, I put little details into the piece that showed, at the time, my excitement at this new experience. However, before I had even put paint on the canvas, the relationship ended, and while I kept the original content of shaming women for their sex lives, the romantic content changed. This project still ended up being my favorite piece of the year (as I said previously); ironically all the time I spent with a piece that represented a very painful experience seems to have been cathartic. My next project will be similar, but more personal. While the outer content that accompanied "Shame" will no longer be there, it will look very much the same and it will be more about finding emotional peace for myself. I debated about focusing on the breakup, but I decided it would be much healthier for all involved if I stopped focusing on how I had been hurt and started focusing on appreciating myself for the present and the future. (Cheesy? Perhaps. True? Definitely.)
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AuthorMolly Goodman Archives
May 2019
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