Fernando Botero

This came to mind because, while I was in Colombia, some of my sister’s American friends were in town, and they talked to me about everything they saw, including a museum with paintings of fat people. This was Fernando Botero’s main painting style. I started thinking about why this was and whether it had any impact, and one thing I can say is that it definitely made people uncomfortable and made them think because it wasn’t the normal style of painting at the time. It was interesting that this was the only description they came up with, but it may be gold because the main thing I saw in this research was not thinking of fat as a bad word, but as a descriptor. After all, if we still have taboos about it, it will never change. 

I saw this article about this subject and the artist. I found it interesting that the connection she made was with eating disorders and the way that this is on the rise in the world, but specifically women, and the way that maybe through his work and having a sort of way of showing a larger body in all sorts of contexts helped this and made people see life in a different persecutive because he has people dancing, working raising children and much more so it is about living in our bodies not constantly trying to change them. Maybe I could do something similar through my paintings? But the question is how to I get them to actually make an impact?