“This is why I paint fat women” by Nigel Rudkin

Artist’s statement…

My inner world centres around discrimination, prejudice and bullying against fat women. If you do not inhabit a fat body, you cannot imagine a world in which everything and everyone is geared towards a body type that you cannot attain. Clothes in most shops are too small for you, there is a widespread assumption that you are lazy, eat too much, are unhealthy, and not worthy of respect.

This is a world where you hide away in the corner of the room, where you live in the shadows of your own life. This is the experience of many fat women - that is why I paint fat women - glorious women who reject all of that, who live in the light and who refuse to be belittled and ignored.

My art is about representation and against such prejudice and in favour of the woman who wants to be herself despite such discrimination.

Many such women face a society that society has deemed unlovable and unworthy, and who therefore spend their lives apart from that society, living in the shadows. Not the women I paint though, who accept their difference, and live in the centre of their own lives.

More about the artist…

Nigel Rudkin is an artist living in Kent whose art practice produces fat-positive, watercolour female nudes. For six years he has been painting portraits of plus size models resulting in a wide online following.

His audience respond to the way Rudkin depicts his models in an affirming, positive and respectful light.

In a generally fatphobic world, being a fat woman who is happy with her body is very subversive, and Rudkin’s subject matter ranges from the quietly confident and beautiful to the politically motivated declarations of fat equality.

His work pushes the boundaries of what the mainstream would typify as female beauty, and he seeks to push those boundaries by painting women as worthy of respect, desire, and love.

Artwork and words by Nigel Rudkin from www.nigelrudkinart.com