http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.smfa.edu/files/facultymodule/%40random4a83044d9a8b2/1254151660_Kelli_Thompson_Carly__Ode_to_the_Dirty__2007_oil_on_birch_panel_web.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.smfa.edu/facultymodule/view/id/128/src/%40random4a83044d9a8b2/&usg=__QOWZMSstDjFbUGu3SsO2IHfh8Ok=&h=328&w=424&sz=82&hl=en&start=4&sig2=YLriLEuVMhlwX7rIutb0Lw&um=1&tbnid=l-F0N5pRogDahM:&tbnh=97&tbnw=126&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dkelli%2Bthompson%2Bnew%2Borleans%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den-us%26um%3D1&ei=SGshS5jXKJ-0NNjFsO4J
Good Children Gallery
www.goodchildrengallery.com
St. Claude Second Saturdays
http://scadnola.com/
Kelli Thompson's new paintings depict caucasian women from the bust up, larger than life. The most striking thing about the images is the ambiguity of the each woman's age. Viewers revel in the struggle to pin point an age for these women but feel comfortable with the twenties to forties range. However, the wide range of possibilities creates a unique tension between viewer and image. With some ethnicities, it can be hard to decipher a woman's age, but this confusion usually alludes white women. It is uncomfortable to cope with how attractive these women should appear when visual clues from the images lead us in opposite directions.
The hints of clothing, overly tweezed eyebrows and straightened hair suggest these women are young ladies. In fact, the cold winter weather creates a contrast for viewing women dressed in summer-inspired clothing. The women in the images wear tank tops, fun colored bras, and spaghetti straps. The color palette and youthful design of clothing looks as if it is straight out of the Victoria Secret PINK catalog. This teenager-feeling comes to a halt once juxtaposed with their skin.
Their skin, rendered in a way that borders grotesque, is the main focus of the images. Leaving the brushstroke absent, Thompson creates a surface that seems heavily layered with saturated washes of translucent oranges, purples, greens and pinks. The leathery look of the skin exudes a feeling of over-use and over-exposure. The fresh pinks and flushed look of the face butt up against the expectation of age. Though the skin on these women's faces looks worn, the skin does not have an excessive amount of wrinkles. In fact, the hyper-texturized depiction of the skin minimizes the presence of wrinkles. Rather than older skin looking dead and dormant, this skin is alive with energetic blood.
What is so engaging about these paintings is that the frames for interpretation overlap. Viewers wrestle with crossed signals and can no longer distinguish how old the women are and remain left with not a clue as to what is beautiful. Is Thompson portraying younger women who have focused too much on beauty and therefore manipulated their skin past reconciliation (the prematurely aged)? Or is this a genre of older women who are attempting to hold on to their youth (soccer moms shopping at Forever 21, forty year old women wearing too much rouge with the wrong bronzer)? The full-frontal and confrontational nature of the women begs for assessment but it is difficult to conclude whether or not these women are beautiful. As a viewer, I found myself in company with those women searching relentlessly for answers to age. This occupation of age, that the viewer finds him or herself in, is possibly reflective of women's excessive attention to detail with their own age.
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