From Muscle Memory

Al Davison
From Muscle Memory

Oil on Canvas
18x12

2009

Al Davison is an Englishman who is not only a great painter and artist, but he also writes comics and graphic novels. His most famous novel is called “The Spiral Cage” an autobiographical graphic novel, which describes his lifelong struggle with spina bifida.

“Muscle memory in the context of this collection of work refers to not only the physical aspect, but to the whole idea of learned responses. We learn from the media what ‘beauty’ is supposed to be, how we are supposed to feel and think about our bodies. These works explore a different aesthetic through the supposedly ‘disabled’, & ‘deformed’ via the classic nude.” –Davison

In other words, this painting was created to alter our perception of beauty. Beautiful no longer means what is idealized in pop culture, media, and even historical culture and ideology. Beautiful is reinvented in this piece.

I chose this work because I found it to be quite beautiful. Even though it is most everyone’s perception of a deformity, it has some real beauty in it. The attention is taken away from the subject’s face and is drawn towards the “deformities” of the body, which is painted softly and remarkably. And even though the attention is drawn towards the missing limbs, Davison still makes the work absolutely stunning without having to spruce up the other parts of her body. The subject’s arms are painted in shadows in the background. I thought this was a great spin off of a classic nude painting. 

(Kyle Tossetti)