Thursday, October 1, 2009

Beautifully Fat Art

In my general readings of blogs in the fatosphere this morning, I came across a this post at the Fat Girls Guide to Living, an interview with Elizabeth Patch, from More to Love. I'd not seen Elizabeth's work before, and I'm thrilled to discover it now. Her artwork is bright, fun, whimsical, and most importantly, positive representations of fat women.

Click image for link to purchase Elizabeth's book.

It's rare that we see fat women (or fat men for that matter) portrayed in art in a positive light. Usually we see the gluttinous fat person, the lazy fat person, the greedy fat person. It is starting to change with photographic art, with fantastic projects like The Adipositivity Project and Leonard Nimoy's Full Body Project. To see these changes coming through to artists of other media, such as painters, digital illustrators, sculptors etc is wonderful.

I'd like to see more fat acceptance in art. Do you know of any artists that are fat positive in their work? Please share them in their comments, so I and any readers can have a look. If I particularly like them, I'll blog them up here at a later date.

4 comments:

  1. Historically, beautiful fat women were frequently art subjects - especially in a lot of Renaissance art (disclaimer: I am more of an historian, rather than an art historian so I can't speak with any authority on this subject). Would be nice to see a return to that type of focus!

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  2. The absolutely lovely man that is Ianardo has always loved drawing we fat ladies.
    He's just really, really sweet and a gent.

    And, I have always, always wanted to be a toilgirl too. One day I'll get my portrait done!

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  3. Thanks for your link to our interview of Elizabeth Patch! I'm adding your blog to our "We Read" section, too.

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  4. beautiful_alone - you're totally right. I guess I should clarify with "contemporary art". Historically there are lots of fat people in art, but sadly fat has become equivalent to ugly last century, and has been progressively getting worse.

    Flibbertigibbet - thanks for the recommendations. I've seen the toilgirl work before, but I must give it some blog love (I often post Hilda on my Tumblog).

    FGG - thank you, it was my pleasure. I intend to add a blog roll here when I've got a little tinker time of the fatosphere blogs I read regularly too.

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