Since March 2020, the host of the Embodiment Sessions, Alex Schmidt a.k.a Body Confidence, has led her audience through a months-long exploration as the model for her twice-weekly life drawing sessions. Shucking a traditional model-as-muse role, Schmidt has actively pushed the boundaries of her practice through her representation on screen (fishermxn, Lisa Lyon, Nancy Spungen, Cicciolina, ballerinx, cowboigorl, etc). Along the way, she has educated her attendees about body positivity vs body neutrality, model as artist, donations vs investments, and a slew of other topics both personal and political. Coupled with other empowerment-forward online life drawing sessions, including Lauren Gerrie x Lindsey Adelman and the Good Move Life Draw, these sessions have allowed me to take part in progressive circles of people across the globe multiple times a week. 

The magnetism of the resulting drawings pushed the figures from side-practice to the center of my paintings. Drawing from the strength of the models, an iconography emerged with its own corporeal vocabulary. The colossal nature and dynamic lines of the figures call for a brighter-than-life palette, simultaneously saluting the colors representing the LGTBQIA+ community, who are often the subject of these works. The rainbow portraits are bold, weighty, epic, archetypal, grounded, confrontational and assured. As a series, they crystallize the desirable characteristics that are hardest to conjure personally at this moment.