Painting folio: concept & plan

The concept for my painting folio this year is the harmful beauty expectations for women, and how they hurt, distort and destroy us, with emphasis on femininity, sexuality and dehumanisation.

Some of the imagery I want to include throughout my painting is:

• Painful clothing - high heel shoes, corsets, etc.
• Makeup
• Mannequins
• Models - especially the recent trend of putting full-face masks on runway models
• Flowers - to represent being feminine, delicate, weak
• Human anatomy - organs, veins, bones, etc.
• Small, dainty animals - birds, butterflies, dragonflies, etc.
• Surgical-type tools
• Hands - to show the influence of others on our own image

Some other aspects I want to use are:

• Art within art - showing hands using paint, sculpture, etc. to manipulate the figures and objects in the paintings -- eg. painting blood on the ties of a corset, sculpting a female form into the same shape as a mannequin, etc.
• The evolution of beauty throughout the centuries, from the muses of classical art to today
• Combining and swapping flowers and objects of the human anatomy

Some of the artist models I'm looking at so far are:

• Rozi Demant
• Leonardo da Vinci
• Frida Kahlo