Sofia Gallardo

“Hear kindness, See kindness, speak kindness”

Acrylic on Canvas 

Female Beauty

This exhibition explores the nature and beauty of the female body highlighting the different features that women have through realistic techniques and fine detail. My artworks for this exhibition were created because they are able to catch the viewers attention by a simple glance as its intense colors and lines illustrate the elegance that the female body has. My interest in this exhibition emerged from past experiences as I have struggled with insecurities about my body for a big part of my life and I wanted to show how no matter what in color and in darkness every body is beautiful and what truly matters is how you present yourself and how you treat others. Additionally I wanted to address how as a society and specially in my generation with social media women and even young girls begin thinking about how in order to be accepted they need to look a certain way and that beauty standard is presented but in reality everyone is beautiful whether they fit that standard or not and even if they choose to change something about themselves to let it be because they feel good and not in order to satisfy society that is why my exhibition is titled “Atelophobia” which is the fear of imperfection, the fear of never being good enough. Some artists that inspired me during this exhibition include Sir Frederic Leighton, and Annex Burgos beginning with “The Muse” The muse is a piece that I created being inspired by Flaming June and Las musas de Bellas artes. The original thought into the creation was to show the ideal body and what girls nowadays wish to look like, the origin of insecurity hence the title is what inspires women to want to change. The second art work in this exhibition is called depth and using the techniques of the colors and the thermal details this piece is used to represent how from the outside a superficial look to women might be nice but the more depth you get to understand about that woman more and more can be appreciated as actions speak louder than just judging something by how it looks. The third artwork in this exhibition allows to highlight 3 different features about women that tend to be the most admired, eyes which are considered to be the windows to the souls, the lips which have been glamorized in all aspects of social media, movies etc, and ears which i believe show a lot about someone’s personality. This piece, “Hear kindness, See kindness, speak kindness” also alludes to the theme throughout this exhibition as it expresses how with kindness there is real beauty and no matter if you are a certain shape, or size or whether you have changed your body in order to look the way you want it to. Finally for the final piece in this exhibition “we are not each other's competition” is a collection of images of women who this generation looks up to and they are all placed together to understand that although all these women look different they share kindness and different talents with each other and understand that nobody stands out less or more regardless of their appearance. The lines that emerge from all the art works in this exhibition are used to represent the unison that there is through the theme as well as how they allow for things to flow whatever is positive for women and what isn't positive can also flow out. This exhibition was created to use these forms of art in order to empower the unity that women should have no matter what they look like and how nobody should be judged on those things. People should be more open minded into allowing to appreciate every single woman no matter if they fit a “standard” or not.