notes from the cinderella complex (open sketchbook) (image lost)

besides working on finding another home for drawing closer i’ve plunged into this…

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photoshop sample drawing ‘stepsister’ 10.21.04

working project title is ‘the cinderella complex’. it starts in my life and the lives of my friends (sordid details edited out) but if you consider elements of the fairy tale…

…like the stepsisters cutting off parts of their feet to make them fit into the glass slipper. they wanted ‘a perfect love’ so badly…

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photoshop sample drawing ‘stepsister’ 10.21.04

another element of the story: blindness — the prince does not recognize cinderella till the slipper fits…the stepsisters blind themselves to cinderella’s beauty (or try to smother it in ashes)

then there’s beauty and the fashion angle: the stepsisters try to acquire beauty through fashion & jewels…cinderella’s beauty is revealed through the mechanism of fashion via the magical power of a spirit-helper. later, stripped of her accoutrements, the prince does not recognize her.

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photoshop sample drawing ‘stepsister’ 10.21.04

i’ve been plumbing these ideas for imagery in the studio using fashion magazines as source material for images of models…i think that the models have become cinderella, and all the rest of us ordinary women are step-sisters who mutilate ourselves to meet the impossible ideal (you know, plastic surgery, makeup & the like). so its completely appropriate to appropriate, alter, and disfigure composition from fashion mags. that action reverses the process of mutilation.

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photoshop sample drawing ‘stepsister’ 10.21.04

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all images etc. copyright jessica fenlon 2004. the sample images on this page were produced parallel to a body of drawings & prints being produced in the material world (as opposed to the electronic/digital world). the ‘woman w/eyes sewn shut’ image emereged originally 9/3/03 when i finished a crappy painting with that title. she’s the icon that wards off self-deception.