A Watercolor Artist Wants To Paint Female Nudity Without Shame

Fahren Feingold captures the space where the ethereal meets the erotic.
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Watercolors have an uncanny ability to turn even the most banal of subject matters into phantasmagorical visions that seem snatched out of a dream. Layered atop a canvas, the stuff seeps ever so gracefully in this direction and that, forming a fluid rhythm of colors and textures that appear at once weightless and intense, a contradictory wash of softness and strength.

Artist Fahren Feingold noticed the dainty-yet-vibrant, mellifluous-yet-dynamic nature of watercolors. She realized the enchanting medium, so often used to depict glowing sunsets or picturesque landscapes, could communicate the gestures of the female form in a way no other medium could quite convey.

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"I grew up making art from as early as I can remember, painting with sticks in preschool," Feingold explained to The Huffington Post in an email. "I first started using watercolors to paint flowers and abstract shapes. It occurred to me that using the medium to paint nudes might be the perfect vehicle. While the subject matter often makes people uncomfortable and is considered taboo, the watercolors are soft and considered ethereal and dreamy. The medium almost masks the seemingly aggressive nature of a subject that people find threatening."

Feingold had been rendering the female nude since she first started figure drawing in the ninth grade. "I learned how to look at the human form as a work of art, without censorship and shame. When you are drawing the figure, you are forced to look past the body as self-condemnation, and rather as an abstract form in nature."

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Although Feingold herself feels no discomfort in admiring and illustrating the unclothed female body, she can't help but feel the larger cultural stigma attached to female nudity, especially when expressed on a woman's terms. Her artwork is an attempt to undo the centuries of censorship, shaming and patriarchal politics that clouds the simple beauty of a naked body.

The artist spends a great deal of time seeking out subjects whose bodies -- through a certain mood, pose or gesture -- convey as much emotion as a facial expression. Her brushstrokes capture the eroticism of the human form, a unique artwork in itself, its fleshy boundaries as porous and unstable as the medium depicting them.

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Through her work, Feingold hopes to shift the conversation surrounding the nude woman in art, carving a space for a female body that is both sexualized and empowered.

"I hope to communicate a sense of femininity and sensuality, beauty and color, eroticism and freedom," she said. "I want to address issues in censorship, showing female nudity as a beautiful moment and not something to be ashamed of. I paint women of different shapes, because the female form is like a flower -- fascinating and alluring in it's uniqueness."

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Before You Go

Francisco de Goya's "The Nude Maja"

Art History's Most Erotic Artworks

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