This is a piece I made for a show at The Dallas Museum of Art in, I think, 2005. I had a lot of late night sessions in my studio playing with different mediums… this one used oil paint, lipstick and menstrual blood.
I wondered about beauty. I wondered about shame. I wondered why I was afraid I would be “found out” when I was on my period.
When this piece hung in the show, I was afraid to list the mediums, so I hid behind “Mixed Media” but one day, one of the security guards pulled me aside and asked, “I’ve heard some rumors about what that dark color is on the painting. Are they true?” I told her that it was, in fact, menstrual blood and I wondered why we felt ashamed as women to have a period and why we felt the need to hide it.
Though I was asking the questions with this piece, I was still afraid to be bold.