I met artist Boyarde through her mother, Nike. I was immediately taken by how original and beautiful her work is. I think Boyarde is a visionary. So, even though she is ridiculously busy, I got her to sit down and tell me about how she makes her fabulous photography, her inspiration and her idea to create a new piece with the help of her friend Charlotte Dellal. Read on…
Boyarde.
I was always destined to be a painter, at school at Bedales, everyone ‘knew’ I was going to be a great painter one day, destined for big things; after going on to do my foundation at Wimbledon School of Art, I suddenly dropped the paint brush, flipped the coin, and decided to do a degree in photography much to everyone’s surprise. And for years i listened to ‘she was so talented, she should have stuck to painting, her photographs are nice, but her paintings were stunning’…. I set out to prove them all wrong!
I was doing commercial photography in London after graduating with BA hons in photography from Bournemouth Arts Institute. At first i wanted to go into fashion, to follow in my mothers foot steps, but it became clear i was more of an environmental portraitist, interested in creative portraits from album covers to even doing music videos. In late 2006 my great friend set up her art company and asked me to create a body of work for her first show in Fulham, she said I had 2 months!
So having studied Kitsch and Post feminism at uni I decided to follow my love: to photograph and empower the female body, and to bring out the inner goddess.. I had dipped in and out of this idea for a while but now it was time to create. So out of nowhere i whipped up my goddess photographs and sold and got incredible feedback; i suddenly realized that perhaps i was a photographic artist after all, as i had never felt worthy enough to actually put my pictures on the wall.
The show was at the end of 2006 and i had my tickets booked already to go for three and a half weeks to Belize, in Central America, to photograph a friends wedding, and go and hang out at their brand new restaurant. I had never heard of Belize, I didn’t even bother to look what part of the globe i was going to! But it became pretty apparent that within a week or so, i had taken more creative pictures there than i had in 2 years in London. I felt so free, i felt alive, and the combination of the sun, the simplicity of the Caribbean lifestyle, the free spirit of the people and my subconscious need to get away from the constraints of the London rat race, enabled me to feel truly inspired for the first time in years.
The rest is history and when i came back i had this empty feeling inside that i had left my heart in Belize. So i started exhibiting my work and got the money to go back for a few weeks by myself which at the time seemed totally normal but actually i see was a bit bonkers! But i had made friends, i had found my place in a little village, and i was welcomed back with open arms. It was there that i had already made friends with this gorgeous belizean girl whose self esteem was completely battered. In Belize, it is not normal to photograph women the way i do, to photograph them nude. But this girl saw my work and she loved it and she asked me to photograph her. She became my belizean goddess, my muse and we started doing lots of photographs together. I brought a set of body paints over, i missed painting so much and was desperate to find a way to incorporate the brush, and through the help of the paint covering her body in one sense, it helped her to release her body in the other: i brought out her inner goddess. I started showing the work over here, and the reaction was incredible.
Nudity in photography is a strange thing in the western world still, but in a third world country it can automatically be seen as dirty or wrong. Men and more importantly, women, loved the pictures and i started getting other girls asking me to photograph them, it was such an amazing feeling knowing i was helping to transform the way the women looked at their bodies in a alpha male dominated country. My original muse gave me the biggest compliment of my life: she told me i had transformed her life forever and made her see how beautiful she was, i had given her her confidence back and her self esteem and she was proud of her body.
I still had many hurdles to over come with the stigma attached to nude photography, but i carefully and quietly started to build my new portfolio of photographs up.
I had to come back to England where i realised i needed to have Belize in my life, and slowly started the transition of my dual life, half in Belize, half in London. In the mean time i continued to exhibit in London, and i quickly saw that another element of my nudes, the bottoms photographs, were incredibly popular. what started from a snap shot of my girlfriend’s bottom sunbathing in the south of France in a pair of ‘naughty’ knicker on a totally accidentally matching colour towel, that sat on my computer hard drive for two years, quickly escalated into my best selling piece!
The Cynthia Corbett gallery in London, took my work on, starting with just the bottoms, and they were a huge success, selling my colourful bottoms in London, New York and Paris. We realised i was onto something, the demand for bottoms was high. I think it is because my bottoms are nudes technically, but they are fun, frivolous, mischievous and very colourful. they are sensual at best and definitely not sexual.
So i took this idea over to Belize, with my brand new set of paints and started slowly on creating a new body of hand painted bottoms to compliment my hand painted nudes. I was covering the idea of bringing out the inner goddess, from all angles, literally!!! My painted bottoms in the style of zebra and leopard patterns caught on, and despite the beginning of the recession, people still wanted bottoms!
So i go every year to my beloved Belize, where life is so simple, to create my body of work to get my inspiration. Life there is funny, it has helped me grow enormously as a person, and when i come back i appreciate London so much more, but i learn to disconnect from the parts i don’t like. London is a rat race, its mutli cultural and glorious but it can be so crammed with layers of whose who and whats what, and whose got the best job and the best restaurant reservation, that sometimes people don’t actually get to ‘live’ their lives. They stop feeling extreme emotion, smothered by the layers of London, so that some people never truly unravel their full potential.
In Belize, sitting on the beach in a small village, when life is hard, its really hard, and when life is great, it is fantastic and orgasmic, there are no layers to cover up those simple reactions and emotions. I have been through a lot of good times there and also bad times, but i cherish them all for helping to actually feel my true emotions and not cover them up conveniently under layers of cotton wool. It has also helped me appreciate the simpler things in life, i am quite a odd bod now, i am just as happy sitting on the beach, eating a plate of rice n beans, and playing cards in a pair of flip flops and jeans, as i am dressing up in a pair of sky scraper shoes, going for delicious dinner in a gorgeous restaurant in London, drinking sumptuous burgundy white wine! I love London, through Belize, Belize has helped me to love London… but i do love my simple life!
Anyway, so my dual life started, i started making the bottoms and it is this year that i threw myself into it and created a massive new collection of hand painted bottoms, i had so much fun painting, the women had so much fun, it was so liberating! And this collection is going to be exhibited, split between the Saatchi gallery and Art London Chelsea both at the same time!
and bouncing backwards a bit…
Tracey, the founder of Art of Giving came to one of my shows last year, i was exhibiting with Jason Bradbury, and she loved my work and immediately asked me to be involved in the Saatchi show and of course i was delighted and said yes yes yes!
It was only this year in July that i came up with the idea of doing an actual body painting installation for the event; this occurred because i was starting to get so bored of having to repeatedly tell people i hand painted the bodies, not the photographs, and nor did i project paintings onto the photographs. Even standing in front of my art pieces, the photographs of painted bodies, people still get so confused! And i technically am a trained painter, and i love painting i miss it when i don’t get to paint, so what a great idea to get the message across in the most gorgeously fabulous way! I was then asked to team it up with some kind of fashion designer for example and immediately jumped to mind, was my great friend Charlotte Dellal and her amazing shoes. She is so talented and her shoes are like pieces of art work in their own right. I have 5 pairs!!!! whenever i wear them to my private views i always get people asking about them and asking to take pictures its brilliant, although sometimes i say ‘you can photograph my feet in front of my art work’ ha ha!
I asked Charlotte and said i wanted to paint some godesses in the style of her shoes and she thought it was a brilliant idea. and that is that! I am currently making the designs for the body paints, but its going to be spectacular, no expense spared. Charles Fox, professional makeup, where i get all my body paint from is sponsoring me and we are going to make these girls look incredible, there is no way you are not going to notice these women! I am also trying to promote healthier toned curvy women, and am not using below a size 10, i want girls who look after themselves but eat healthily and embrace their bodies, and together we are going to liberate the inner goddess tee hee!
