Your Open Palm is an Invitation, Your Silhouette is a Bruise
My thesis series inspects what it means to be a body through the conceptual and visual frameworks of contra dance, boxing, play, and friendship. Bodies push, pull, punch, and twirl – unstable, sensing, and not confined by human-made boundaries. They tumble and spin, expressing that pain can be the celebration of inhabiting a body – the prize is to get bruised. I depict the grey area between the fight and the dance, the choreographed and the improvised. These spaces are vulnerable expressions of aliveness that allow the body to be fully grounded in its own language, rooted in desire and change. Bodies are in constant oscillating states of becoming, creating themselves, space, and time through movement. The body-quality of the canvas transforms painting into a violent act as I exert my will over it and it responds to my touch. These works ask: What does it mean to reach toward an other as a partner and/or an opponent?
Bio
Francesca Woolson grew up in Western New York surrounded by rolling hills and Lake Erie – incorporating these environmental influences in her art with a focus in surrealist figuration. Woolson received an Elizabeth Greenshield Grant in 2024 which enabled her to expand her artistic practice through experimentation. For most of her life she attended ballet classes, which then pivoted to boxing classes at the end of high school. This contrast of flowing lines and intensity now informs her painting practice. When not in the studio, she loves finding secret places and listening to a variety of live music around Portland.
