Meditative moments in art.

By: Maxine Hurt | April 01, 2009 | Art Profile

Some say that their best thinking is done in the bathroom. Insulated by a quiet, finite space where perhaps the most mundane of daily tasks are performed, they are granted a few moments of solitary meditation. Porcelain walls protect them from interruption while they care for their body leaving their mind free to perform its own inner grooming. A dripping faucet provides an enabling soundtrack.

Figure artist Cynthia Westwood is drawn to this atmosphere.

In an exhibit last year aptly titled Bathroom, the 39-year-old Texan-turned-Londoner realized her first solo show at Galerie Bertrand & Gruner in Geneva, Switzerland. The oil-on-linen paintings, a careful study of nude women (mostly artists) in perhaps the most private and contemplative room in the home, reveal them during various moments at their toilette; a subject most often addressed from a male perspective.

An ex-ballerina with the Houston Ballet, Westwood deftly recreates both motion and stillness and the in-between moments. One woman is easing into a warm bath. Another is removing a lace-trimmed nightgown. And yet another is captured while rinsing her hair. Westwood shows a sincere reverence for the female form — its grace, delicacy and dignity — leaving no room for lechery.

Westwood, who has shown her work in galleries and museums in New York, creates images that are eerily detailed, almost photographic, allowing the viewer to marvel at the range of color in a pair of lips, the intricate pattern in a feathered eyebrow, or a faint blush beneath the skin. Her closely cropped scenes encroach on the canvas edge while the bathroom walls, tub and sink form a tight embrace that includes the viewer. Although a part of the exchange, the viewer’s presence remains non-invasive. Westwood’s women never look at the viewer and therefore the women are allowed to continue their secret rituals and ruminations seemingly unobserved. 

Malibu Magazine was able to catch up with this expatriate as she prepares another series of Bathroom paintings for a 2010 exhibit at Galerie Bertrand & Gruner. She’d just had her second child making her own life and work a subject of meditation.
Malibu Magazine: How did you make your way to London?
Cynthia Westwood: After a short career dancing with the Houston Ballet, I moved to Boston for my B.F.A. and then onto New York for my M.F.A. Shortly after finishing graduate school, I was awarded a travel grant to paint in France where I met my husband who is British and also an artist. I moved to London in 2001.

MM: Was there a defining moment when you knew you’d be an artist?
CW: Having pursued painting and dance growing up, the thought of having a career outside of the arts never occurred to me. After a severe back injury left me unable to continue dancing, I sought formal training in painting. I suppose my interest in the grace, balance and line of the body in dance was a natural progression into figure painting.

MM: What do you hope to achieve with your art?
CW: I hope to achieve better psychological and physiological understanding of the human figure.

MM: What was your artistic process when painting the Bathroom works?
CW: I begin with a drawing in charcoal on paper that is transferred to the canvas. At this early stage, I have usually committed to a particular composition. To keep the surface as luminous as possible, I try not to rework any areas of the painting once it is dry. Despite not reworking the canvas, each painting takes around two months to complete.

MM: Why do you choose nude women as your subjects?
CW: There is a softness and elegance in the female form that I find beautiful. The figure is at its most graceful and honest when captured in a moment seemingly unaware of a viewer. For me, the body then becomes a more accessible visual bridge to the commonly shared experience of what it means to be human. By the very nature of viewing another person, a comparison or association is made with oneself.

MM: If one of the women in your paintings could speak, what would she say?
CW: The way we carry our body communicates with an immediacy that precedes language. The body reveals an honesty that is frequently censored by expression through language, and I’m interested in the way that a gesture speaks without the need for words. I think most paintings are more personally meaningful when the interpretation is visual.

MM: What are your thoughts on intimacy and art?
CW: As soon as one puts a figure into a picture there is an immediate intimacy with the viewer. The introduction of a figure in a composition will alter the image entirely. Static images can provide one with the opportunity to scrutinize a private and personal moment. Although this type of intense observation is wholly constructed, it is nonetheless a reorientation with the intimacy of the human condition.
MM: What do you feel is the role of art in modern society?
CW: Art should reconnect us with the essence of humanity and be a catalyst for self-awareness and reflection.

MM: Tell me about one of the most influential people in your life?
CW: I met Eric Fischl in New York while studying at the New York Academy of Art. He has continued to be a mentor whose opinion I value highly.

MM: Do you have any heroes or heroines?
CW: The Mexican painter Frida Kahlo.

MM: What artwork do you have in your own home?
CW: A number of large prints by my husband and paintings bartered with other artists. I’ve never been comfortable living with my own work.

MM: What do you look forward to most?
CW: The 2 p.m. BBC radio play, while I’m working the studio. It’s a 45-minute drama by different writers every weekday. The plays vary. Some are comic, some more serious, but they are almost always entertaining and a nice segue into the afternoon.

MM: What do you dislike about life as an artist?
CW: Knowing that the best that I can do is not always good enough.

MM: What is one secret that you wish you could reveal?
CW: How to install a child’s car seat. 

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