A Look Back at "Portrait of a Painter"

I went through some old CDs tonight and came across a disc from a photo session I did with a friend 8 years ago called "Portrait of a Painter". I had just started painting, probably around 2005, and knowing this, my friend Nicolle Cabrales asked me to sit for a project for her, to which I enthusiastically agreed.

Looking through this CD of photos was hard. I was overweight at the time (still eating meat and animal products), and unhappy with life in general- I was stuck in a town I hated, finding it hard to move forward in life at 21 because I was still poor, still struggling to move on from the pain of a rough home life, and at the beginning of a breakup with a good man that Fall. But I found joy when I painted, I found freedom. While painting in the middle of the shoot, I asked if I could undress and paint the rest of the session naked, and luckily, my friend went with it. It felt freeing, empowering, and right. I ended up spending several years around this time taking nude photographs while I explored my eye as a photographer, and spent many years posing nude for different photographer friends because it not only helped them to build their portfolios; it helped me to feel alive in my own skin. My body wasn't perfect and I knew it, but when doing something I loved, it didn't matter- art SHOULD be about throwing off all that keeps us from being IN IT. Here are a few shots from that shoot that I still love.

All photos © Nicolle Cabrales 2007

I've gotten better at painting since then, thankfully.