Vanity Suite – Artist’s Statement
Vanity Suite is an installation of four life-size figurative paintings that employs both the religious and art historical story of the Three Graces to challenge contemporary definitions of “the muse” within the context of negotiating sexual identity (and desire).
According to Christian theology, Faith, Hope and Charity name the theological virtues that are divine gifts to those upon whom God bestows his grace. They are the three cardinal Christian graces. According to Greek mythology, the Three Graces are the three goddesses of joy, charm and beauty. They presided over pleasurable social events and brought joy and goodwill to both god and mortals. Together with the Muses, they sang and danced to the gods on Mount Olympus. The graces were rarely treated as individuals, but always together as a kind of triple embodiment of grace and beauty and like the Muses, they were believed to endow artists and poets with the ability to create beautiful works of art.
In Vanity Suite, the one male and three female figures are set amidst the ruins of a west-coast clear-cut. They no longer bask in the splendor of the natural world, rather, they are engaged in the drama of a strip tease dance in the post-fall reality of a clear-cut; the post fall reality of Eden. This is a landscape of chaos and destruction but also of renewal. This scene displays a state of confusion and examines the persistence of innate human behaviours within the shifting nature of sexual roles in our society.
Vanity Suite is a drama and at the center of this drama is confrontation, which the viewer because of proximity will enter directly into and become a part of. Passive voyeurism is therefore obscured.