Lisa Hoffner

More than any other subject, the female nude serves as the unequivocal axiom of art. A majestic expression, it draws a hazy line between art and obscenity. It will sublimate, titillate, and render your senses powerless. It has a loyal and long-term relationship with history, flourishing with Botticelli's The Birth of Venus and recapitulating through Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon and continuing into the frank images brought on with the art of the camera.
A symposium of the luscious, the grotesque, the domineering and the exploited, my work is a visual soliloquy of the social conventions of women. Impregnated with the pervasive influence of contemporary pop culture, the figures coalesce in space with layers of imagery and graphic elements. A reverence to history is maintained through the idealistic rendering of the figures, the comprisal of classic poses, and references to the ecstasy and pathos and visual aesthetics of religious icons. The end result is an alchemy of body and nature, time, and the nonpareil personage that is the female nude.

BFA Savannah College of Art and Design, 2009