See-line Woman Dressed in Red, Makes her Man Lose his Head ,2012
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Notes : Following the birth of her son, Bell turned to watercolours, later switching to diluted acrylic paints, because working with oil paints and turpentine seemed too toxic while breast-feeding a baby. It was almost twenty years before she returned to oils in 2010 in homage to her former teacher and friend, Robert Hodgins. Consciously emulating his practice of using glazes to create figures and objects through colour, she began to allow images and the meanings they generate to emerge through the process of painting. Always interested in the tactile quality of oils, Bell’s shift in medium went hand-in-hand with a renewed concern to explore the carnal lives of women. But unlike her early paintings of lovers trapped in fleshy bodies and claustrophobic interiors, the women who started emerging from her canvases are single, self-assured and assertive. While some have discarded their red shoes, thereby signaling that they are without artifice, others affirm the control they have over their own destinies by carrying them.Echoes of Bell’s fascination with red shoes, which dates back as far as the early 1990s when she worked on an animated collaborative project with Robert Hodgins and William Kentridge, titled Easing the Passing (of the hours), can be found in the songs of some of the musicians she listens to while painting, notably Tom Waits and Nina Simone. She loves Wait’s Red Shoes by the Drugstore, a song about botching a jewelry store heist, in which a man tries to steal a diamond for his woman because “he loved the way she looked in those red shoes.” But as the title suggests, See-line woman also invokes a 19th century American folk song, famously recorded by Nina Simone in 1964. Originally about prostitutes – sea lions – waiting for sailors as they disembark from their boats, the song celebrates the power of women who make men lose their heads: “Empty his pockets and wreck his days, Make him love her, And she'll fly away”. Having achieved her goal, the woman in the Nina Simone rendition bends down, picks up her shoes and throws them over her shoulder, before turning around and walking away.
Sandra Klopper
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