Lemon Meringue, 2010
By Katelyn Kenney
Lee Price’s “Women & Food” series is a collection of hyper-realistic oil paintings that depict women, often nude, eating in private spaces such as beds or bath tubs with self-portraits interspersed that place the artist within the art itself. The pieces explore ideas of vulnerability, rebellion, shame, and indulgence that often surround conversations about the relationships between women and their eating habits. Price, who is from New York, has been painting women and food for over twenty years, partially as a cathartic means to reflect on her own history with body image. To create this series, subjects were photographed from a bird’s eye point of view, and the photos were converted to a transparency. Price would then project the image onto a linen canvas, trace a rough outline, and complete the painting without the projection.
The series presents a few situations that are reiterated in different ways, with the aerial perspective presenting the scene as a contemplative out-of-body experience. First, a clothed woman sits on the floor or a bed or at table surrounded by food. Then, a nude woman eats in a bath tub or lies in bed, again either eating or surrounded by food. Contradicting ideas are at play throughout the series as some women’s face are out of view while the self-portraits show Price looking directly into what would have been a camera. The eye contact, or lack thereof, indicates the ways in which indulgence can be framed. When Price stares at the viewer with a mouth full of a jelly doughnut, she is exercising her bodily autonomy through the pleasure of consumption, an act that can be viewed as a rebellion against societal standards that often shame women for their eating habits. On the other hand, the faceless women in their solitude represent the secrecy and compulsive behavior associated with addiction. However, that idea alone does not fully capture the essence of those paintings; those subjects can also be perceived as claiming their right to indulge, but Price allows the audience to decide.
"I use food as a metaphor for the ways we distract ourselves from being present," - Lee Price
A less obvious theme underscoring this series is the search for real nourishment. These women are repetitively engaging in an attempt at fulfillment, but one wonders if satiating our primal need for food is enough. Of course, the foods pictured in this series for the most part lack any nutritional value, but they are foods typically associated with comfort and pleasure, and their selection also serves to highlight the absurdity associated with binge eating. We can assume that these women are seeking something to make them feel whole, but food is the most readily available vehicle. The idea of using food for solace is both reinforced and challenged by these paintings.
It’s no secret that humans have been perpetually embroiled in a battle with food since the beginning of time. Take Eve and the apple. There is no better allegory connecting consumption and sin than this, and it’s oddly fitting that the story begins with a woman. Women have had a particularly arduous history with food, as fad diets and weight loss crazes all-too-often lead to eating disorders and plummeting ideas of body image, which differ depending on where you fall on the scale. Bigger girls try to eat less to get skinny while thinner girls eat more to gain curves. In a time when the subjective abstraction of an ideal body, fueled by the rise of social media and “fit-spiration,” tends leads women of all ages on a path to endless discontent, Price’s art gives women permission to participate in those actions deemed absurd or unbecoming while they navigate towards the things upon which their soul truly feeds but has yet to discover.
View the entire series here