Bare torsos, totemic altars, evocations of childbirth and gender fluidity form the basis for Haynes’ visceral, carnal oil paintings

Willem de Kooning once stated that flesh was the reason oil paint was invented. To artist Clarity Haynes (born 1971), the correlation between flesh and paint is alchemical. Portals is the first survey celebrating her paintings. The book explores her approach to nontraditional portraiture informed by feminism and gender interrogation, starting with her seminal The Breast/Chest Portrait Project, ongoing for the past 25 years; her series of trompe l’oeil Altars; and her new Crowning series. With her depictions of blood, Haynes revels in the abject and transcendent, in defiance of the taboo subject of childbirth in the history of art. Her queer activist point of view shifts the gaze to a decidedly visceral, sensual engagement with paint, challenging what bodies can be.