Male Figurative Portfolio

MALE FIGURATIVE

Concentrating exclusively on painting from male models, Pamela Frankel Fiedler amassed over a dozen large paintings during the course of a year. This body of work, from her “Man Up” series, epitomizes an assertive and courageous venture into portraying the intimacies of human expression which often face unmerited censorship. To learn more about the artist’s experience, read her essay, “Painting My Self Portrait Through Male Nudes,” which can be found below the male figurative portfolio images.

MALE FIGURATIVE PAINTING TECHNIQUE: Pamela’s unique style is highly identifiable by her use of contemporary cropping, distinctive poses and for intentionally leaving the original graphite drawing in strategic areas which allows the viewer to unconsciously fill in the details.

“Painting My Self Portrait Through Male Nudes”

by Pamela Frankel Fiedler

For the lack of a better word, my ‘epiphany' came after a year of intensive work. I had deferred my intention to photograph and paint using male models for over a decade. There didn’t seem to be a clear reason for my procrastination. I suppose I could rationalize that it had always been awkward for me, a shy woman, to ask a person to model in the nude, especially if it was a man. However, that year I would learn through self-discovery that it wasn’t the primary reason.

My procrastination ended when I finally hired my first male model. It really hadn’t been as awkward as I had feared. Instead it was quite business-like and natural. After several photo sessions with various models I had the reference photographs for my male series. A year passed while I watched the new male paintings take a foothold in my studio where female imagery had once proliferated. It was almost as if the canvases painted themselves due to the manic pace at which I was painting. Concentrating exclusively on the male series, I created over a dozen paintings in oil, pastel and metal leaf.

The next task was to attend to the myriad details involved in producing my solo exhibition titled, “Man Up”. I delivered the finished artwork to INTRIGUE Gallery two days prior to the opening of my exhibition. Completely focused on the mechanics of hanging the show, I hadn’t absorbed the totality of the series until I stepped back to see if it was indeed hung properly. What I saw instead was astounding; it was an ‘epiphany'. I realized that the raw male energy reverberating off the gallery walls was my true self-portrait. The body of work was the “me,” that I had always kept safely inside and not allowed to surface because of social expectations of gender-based propriety. It was the ‘me’ that I always wanted to be; confident, assertive and courageous.

The series was my inside-out, true self-portrait, actualized through painting male nudes. That realization has allowed me to approach my figurative work in a more balanced manner. Currently my work melds together attributes which are often mislabeled as gender specific into a more accurate and powerful amalgamation of what it means to be human, not simply male or female.