Untitled (Two Women Walking)

You may not look at this painting and remember a girl you used to love, but I do. She was my star-crossed lover. Restrained by timidness and situation, she never learned to bear her naked soul, but she stole time enough to wander away with mine. 

While its likeness to my Sapphic nostalgia is how I stumbled into this feeling of fearless exposure, that’s the sentiment I hope people take away from these two women walking. 

For many, this is a scene from a nightmare: naked in public. But the subject here DGAF. To get extraordinarily philosophical, she is giving me strong Hannah Arendt vibes. As though her nudity signifies a deeper acceptance of her raw identity. 

Hannah Arendt talked about living without banisters, meaning we face uncomfortable truths and suffering through painful self-reflection. In this banister-less existence, there is no motive to assert dominance over a fate with which you’ve already come to terms.  There’s also no need for the othering, or subjugation of people you recognize as equally ill-fated to be human. 

Untitled (Two Women Walking) shows me a vision of my past and also one of the future. The possibility of a contented, naked existence where we are all comfortable in our flawed skin.

Well, almost everyone.