Performance Painting Painting

Pauline Amos attended art college in Liverpool and Manchester and completed a PhD (2004) titled -: Self(ish) - Fusion Thinking and Practice @ Dartington College of Arts. Always a painter with dabbling in the music scene and acting in Liverpool in the 90s, she returned to art and painting full time with performances in galleries in 1999 with a performance titled My Flesh My Canvas that led to many works in Europe and Asia. Using the body as a blank canvas has been paramount to the Amos code in making work and performing, the most recent being Atomic Forms and the Corruption of Flesh an exhibition and performance in London, February 2009. 'painting as a performed work, using the naked body as canvas, interacting with sound and movement, working in the moment; I place my self within the painting and become part of it, the art is the person - the life that is making the work. The paintings are documents and a recording of an event, an action that happened - they are not the work; the action, the performance the improvised and impulsive moment is the work; the art is alive'. Major works include 24 hour durational performances in The Opera Paese Gallery, Rome. The resulting painting went on sale in London for 1.3m, the price was purposefully provocative creating press stories and an art scandal at the time.

Included in the vast body of her works are visual/sound installations and films, collaborating with sonic artists and composers.
Her work in the performance art scene has influenced a number of proteges using the naked female body in work and not referring to the victimization, sexual objectification or repression of women, but combining Constructivism and painterly concepts with her physical body and a raw powerful energy revolving around the connectivity of all things and the redemption of the self. she explains the naked performances; ' My Flesh My Canvas' painting and naked performance series - we come here as a blank canvas, and the world touches us, imposes itself upon us and scratches the surface with corruptions creating alterations to the first empty and unblemished space; thus why I invite the audience to paint on my flesh,' Interviewed on BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour (2009) [xiii] and quizzed by Jenni Murray about the use of the naked body in art work and the sexual content of the female artists' work.