The Self in Food

Lilly Weakley (she/her)

Description:

 My body of work deals with the relationship between food and the individual. Specifically, my work deals with my relationship to food and the restrictions I experience, self-imposed through various obsessive thoughts surrounding food. Due to a strained relationship with food and strictly the process of eating, it makes eating a meal in full difficult on my body and psyche. I paint these still life images as a means of capturing and documenting the meals that I have either eaten partially or haven’t been able to touch entirely. These paintings are painted in tondo, with an angle directly above the plate of food as a means of forcing confrontation with the food I cannot eat. The plates are also all plates found in the home, as my home is what offers the most comfort during mealtime; pausing a meal halfway through and resuming at a later time is acceptable in the privacy of your own created space. These still life paintings function as self-portraits in documenting my mental state throughout the duration of a meal.