"The Three Graces in Bozeman" By Catherine Wilson

The Three Graces in Bozeman combines an oil painting of the Three Graces and a photo I took while on a cross country road trip in 2019/20. The painting was an homage to the Hustler series I did in college. I would purchase Hustler and Playboy magazines and paint images of women from them focusing on the female gaze. For this piece I had purchased a deck of nude playing cards and pulled three face down in a tarot fashion. I drew the three in a blind contour style and then painted them in. I love the way the bodies over lap and how the three end up being a cone shape from the left to right with the third grace taking up the entirety of the frame. For me the subject of the female gaze is always an intriguing one. The three graces represent youth/beauty, mirth and elegance. I think you can find those same characteristics in many pornographic images of women. Kind of capturing an ideal image of a woman; the essence is almost the same in every photo but different women and poses. I think the graces change according to what the viewers own desires are, and so their bodies alter distorting and changing color. For me, the ideal of the three graces incorporates all different colors of skin and hair, and they are translucent, overlapping with each other creating different combinations of beauty, not focusing on the singular body but the movement of the ideal as a whole. I placed the graces in Bozeman because that atmosphere encapsulates characteristics of the graces. Vast and engrossing sky that is large enough to hold the graces in their own glory. This is my Genesis piece.