Controversy.

Well now, is anyone up for a little controversy?  In it's mildest and politest form may I add.

 It's about the genre of Life Painting and whether or not you think it should be on a quilt. 

 As well as the three pieces I've done for the Redditch Needle Museum for the Orientation Exhibition, I was planning to do a couple more for the larger venues, as the exhibition travels around the country.

These were going to be on my current theme of Life Stories.  It's a rich seam (pardon the pun) for me and there's loads more I want to do and say.

 In one I was going to explore the life of a geisha and contrast it to our own tea ceremony with cup cakes and a proper teapot!  The other was going to be called "Still Life" about zen and meditation.







Two very well known art magazines have been in touch recently to ask me about doing articles on me and my stitching.

I was over the moon! Who wouldn't be?  But then I was told that it wouldn't be possible to show any images of my work because there was an "editorial" ban on putting nudes in the (quilting) magazines.

 

So, then I got to thinking.  Life Painting is a perfectly acceptable form of art, and is widely seen in art galleries across the world. There is nothing shameful in the human body or it's portrayal of it.  Throughout time people have been painted without clothes on. Indeed some of the worlds greatest paintings contain nudes and it is still a universally  established art form in our time with exponents such as Hockney, Bacon, Dali, Freud....the list is very long! 

So why on earth shouldn't there be quilts with life paintings on them in quilting magazines?


Presumably the editors of magazines are aware of all these things; perhaps they have visited cities like Rome, where the churches are adorned with naked people. But, of course, the magazines are theirs, and they can do precisely want.











But, my current work is based on exploring the female form, and using it to express my art - confronting people with reality, and fighting back against the images forced at us by the media, about what is and is not a perfect body; challenging and throwing realism to the fore.

 So, I'm hesitating.

I can't seem to divorce what I sew from what I want to say about female issues.

To do an article about my work without  including images of what I do, seems odd. It's also rather unfair to deny me the opportunity of speaking to the quilting world at large.

It seems to me that the "Fine Art World" calls quilts craft, and denies the fact they are a growing art form, and yet the quilting world does the opposite, and accepts them only as a craft, and won't accept the art.


Any thoughts?