LYDIA MOZZONE STATEMENT & BIO
STATEMENT
In my work, I am depicting exposure using the body and its relationship with space.
I am interested in capturing the female at a raw moment of self-reflection. When we are alone with our naked bodies, we are at our most exposed state. The nude is not aware of the viewer’s presence and we see the figure as she experiences a very intimate and vulnerable moment in the shower.
I choose to paint the female body in an active space. It contorts, crowds, accentuates, and conceals portions of the naked form. The background obscures and affects the figure to reference the exterior pressures and expectations felt by the modern woman. The identities of the figures are obscured because I am referencing the female gender rather than a specific type of woman.
I intend the figures to be rendered in a beautiful and classically inspired way. However, the imposing backgrounds, the texture and the masking and reemerging of forms commence dialogue of modern society’s ideal female figure and the ways in which it affects the contemporary woman’s psyche.
BIO
Lydia Mozzone is best known for her atmospheric renderings of the female form in oil paint. She began her series of figurative works while studying oil painting at Skidmore College. In search of a way to depict the complex, emotional relationship she maintained with her own body, she began photographing her four (very supportive) college roommates through a foggy glass shower. As these images transformed into paintings, she fell in love with the ways she could use the glass and water vapor as mechanisms to distort the figure. Lydia’s work continues to explore facets of female body image with the play of focused, layered areas against masked, obscured passages.
Lydia’s work has been exhibited at the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts, the Lore Degenstein Gallery in Selinsgrove, PA, and in a two-person show at the Cape Cod Cultural Center, South Yarmouth, MA alongside her mother, Michele Poirier-Mozzone. Lydia was named one of ten “Artists to Watch” by Boston Accent Lit in 2018.
Lydia is currently living and painting in her apartment in Boston’s North End.