Getting personal . . . and naked

 Warning: blatant self-promotion 

Anatom Afterglow, oil on canvas

Anatom and Woman with Stripes, oil on canvas

Once upon a time when I was in high school my older sisters and their husbands and children came for a visit my then six-year-old nephew watched me working on a life-size painting of a nude. I talked to him about how I mixed the colors and about light and shade while I painted. Later, as we were finishing a family meal, my nephew said, “Alec, let’s go paint some more naked womans.”

At a recent family reunion—the first I had attended in 17 years—he told that story. Only his version was quite different from what I remembered.

Anyway, I continued painting “naked womans” (and men too) off and on for the next 40 years. I must have done hundreds of figure paintings, some naked and some clothed, some realistic and other abstracted to various degrees, including a few with both boy parts and girl parts, and some monster figures called anatoms. And I recall at least one woman with three breasts (I sold that one to a woman who was a sex therapist).

Now there are only about a dozen of those paintings still in my possession. I sold a lot and gave some away, and some were lost or destroyed. Of those few, there are a few that I intend to keep for myself ’til death do us part.  That leaves seven paintings that are available for purchase. Only seven out of God knows how many. And they will all be in an upcoming show called BARE :: A BOUDOIR EXHIBITION IN GROUP SHOW EXPLORING 1 & 2 DIMENSIONAL EXPRESSIONS IN NUDITY at B2 Fine Art in Tacoma.  That’s quite a title, and it should be quite a show. I don’t yet know who the other artists will be, but I look forward to finding out.

The show opens Jan. 24 and runs through March 14. See, I told you this was blatant self-promotion.