This painting narrates the personal story of Kirah. When Kirah was in high school she was drugged and gang raped. The perpetrators took pictures and video. In the painting she is confronting the viewer with her gaze while cutting the film, freeing herself from her tortured past and taking the control back that was taken from her. Kirah is now a professional model who instead of allowing the experience to stigmatize her relationship with film, has instead courageously continued to follow her passion.

I use the technique of chiaroscuro (high contrast from light to dark) to reference how a woman’s depth can only be rendered with her dark shadows present as well as her light. I want to step away from the assumption that the female nude has to be reduced to dehumanized sex symbol or an allegorical figure of purity to be well received. The personal stories of female subjects are scarcely told and often censored. I intend to show that beauty is incomplete without humanizing factors that a woman obtains throughout her life. I utilize wood as the foreground to illustrate the raw nature of the content.