Artwork comes to life In Atlanta
Story and Photography by Terry Check
As always, we seek extraordinary stories pushing the limits of artwork, cultural mores, and sensuality. Mode Lifestyle Magazine’s “Body Painting Is Living Art” is such a story. Only for a few hours, body painting becomes fine art, and then washes away forever.
Contemporary artists from twelve countries gathered in Atlanta to create “living art” expressing the “human condition” in today’s world. Instead of painting on canvas, the thirty-six artists created their artwork on human bodies. Like painting on canvas, body painting in Australia, Africa and the Pacific islands and later throughout the world is centuries old, originating with indigenous cultures, often worn during ceremonies, using clay, berry juice, wet charcoal and other natural pigments. Often, circus clowns and stage performers wore elaborate costumes together with face painting. Today, in a more subdued form, many women “face paint” with cosmetics to enhance their natural beauty. With full-body painting, artists express their creative interpretation of the human condition.
Bodypainting festivals are popular worldwide, often a weekend affair with creatives, live entertainment, and libations. Come join us at the next festival and unleash your creative inhibitions.
