Nadine Faraj

Region: MFA Annual

I want to make it so you feel totally alive, so you feel without thinking, just for a moment.

I paint with watercolor on paper. This is a subtle medium that I use to depict provocative scenes—I like the tension between these two qualities. I use a wet technique that allows color to run, bleed, and expand in all directions. Pigments often bloom on their own, creating unexpected forms. I enjoy the broad range of body reconfigurations that ensue, which I see as depictions of our irrational selves. And I wonder, if I abstract bodies to the edge of recognition, can I point to some unnameable experiences?

I explore our inner workings, using eroticism to reveal our neuroses and our beauty. Sex has the uncanny ability to reveal exactly that which we would prefer to conceal. The bulk of my source material comes from magazines that drastically trivialize sex. Painting in an expressionistic way, I’ve been transforming these images of sex-without-feeling into new, more human, more vulnerable versions.