Birth of Venus Painting

Looking at the original painting and making some research I though about a few points that helped me ending up with the final concept: Venus in the painting represents to me a sort of feminine ideal that is impossible to attain. Even the way she stands is physically impossible. She is young, beautiful, with an unrealistically long neck and small shoulders. She is the goddess of love, beauty, sex and fertility. I was thinking from a feminist perspective that women in art have been represented for ages as being worthy of our attention only when young and beautiful. Even though the criteria of what is beauty evolved over time. I wanted my Venus to be the opposite of that ideal. I chose a middle-aged woman. She is a bit round and represent to me the “real woman”. She is not getting out of the water with the wind blowing in her hair, but she is surrounded by everyday objects that will be very familiar to the contemporary woman. For the structure of my painting, I was inspired by the linear structure of the original painting where all the characters are pretty much aligned without real perspective. This is reminiscent of the structure of a Greek vase and that was my inspiration for the design. I moved around our model Shelley when she was posing for us so I could draw here from different perspectives, and aligned those perspectives on my painting. It is a bit as if you were moving around the model seeing her from different angles. I then took some elements of the painting and transformed them: - The roses stripe at the top is an echo of the flowers blowing in the wind on the original painting - Under the roses is a row of electric fans as a representation of the wind in the original painting - On the feet of the model is a row of shells - The sea and the fabric laundry soap bottles are in parallel with the sea and water - The last row echoes the laurel in the original painting. The rest of the elements are objects that are very familiar to women, either for cooking (the first row is a row of pastry roll pin, there is also a row of whisks), cleaning (vacuum cleaner, laundry machines…) and taking care of yourself (lipstick, hair brush…).

Painting:Ink on Paper

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:25 W x 20 H x 1.5 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.