Lee Price’s Paintings: A depiction of the complicated relationship between food, female body image, addiction, and desire.

The New York-based artist, Lee Price, has been painting portraits of either herself or other women for twenty years. However, it wasn’t until recently that she became fascinated with the relationship between women and food. In her new series that has taken over seven years to produce,  the paintings focus and explore the obsessive compulsive relationship that many women have with food. The paintings were inspired by the eating disorder Price herself suffered from in the past as explained in an interview. 'When I’m having difficulties in my life, food is still how I deal with things,'  she admits, “ It's not the severity that it was, but I might grab a pint of Haagen Dazs without thinking”.

Her paintings have been described as being a “narrative on women's relationship with food” as they often depict herself, with the exception of two paintings, one of her mother and one of a friend, enthusiastically snacking on luxurious desserts and sweets in private settings, such as toilet stalls, bathtubs or beds where eating is considered somewhat taboo. With the aim of exploring womens complex relationship with food, the images often depict private moments where the artist herself binge eats behind closed doors in different secret settings. She explained the use of food as a metaphor;  “I use food as the focus, but any number of other things could stand in for food. They're about the multifarious ways we check out. We use food to seek solace, but then our search for comfort turns into a way of not being present in the moment”.

The paintings show human compulsive behaviour whilst gorging on food as a subconscious mechanism for soothing ourselves however, as commented on by the artist, this type of behaviour is “more misguided than it is shameful—you’re doing something to try to make yourself feel better and, in the end, you’re harming yourself. It’s sad. It’s human nature.”  Price’s new series of personal paintings are made up mostly of self portraits where she paints herself only eating what are considered indulgent, forbidden, or comforting foods as a way of highlighting the aspects of compulsive eating. As she states “No one gets excessive with carrots”. Price chose certain settings, not to increase the idea of the act of binge eating being “shameful”, as has been interpreted by many,  but to emphasise the realistic idea of the secrecy created by compulsive behaviour, as well as commenting on the juxtaposition of the solitude and peaceful setting in relation to the out-of-control excessive eating. Many of the paintings observe the women eating from a birds eye view, metaphorically showing the subject looking down on herself, as if observing herself in the act of the compulsive behaviour, being completely aware of what she is doing but unable to stop. As Price notes, “I’ve spoken to friends who have had this same experience in relation to drug addiction. It’s a bit like an out-of-body experience.”

Despite the various interpretations her paintings have received, Price hopes that inevitably her paintings will reflect our emotional connection to eating and make us question what we are truly hungry for and seek out our desire.

Natalie Reppas