The Fabulous World of Body painting

During the end of January this year I was asked at the last minute to participate in a body painting event that was being held at a local lounge/nightclub, the Native Lounge http://nativelounge.com/ in San Luis Obispo. I had a very vague idea of what was involved with this entire month long event event, entitled "Embodiment". My friend had been invited to participate, and only within hours of the opening of the show I was asked to come down and to select a model. I had been holding down the fort in my friend's art supply store on a very slow Thursday, working on bird studies for a painting, so I decided that if I was going to paint on a body, I would paint an owl. Apparently there was a surplus of male models (no surprise here as all of the participating artists were men with the exception of one girl). I walked into the vacant surf supply/painting studio now converted to model headquarters /almost nude body painting space. After announcing my presence a very young girl, Brandi, with long, wavy tendrils of red hair asked the two male models to take their shirts off. I had to choose between the two bare-chested men who were standing before me. One had pecs that were larger than any of the females present and tattoos that distracted me from concentrating on my human "canvas". My attention immediately turned to the other model, Christopher. His warm smile and engaging attitude won me over immediately. I proceeded to paint my Eurasian Pygmy Owl over his body. In the depths of the sweaty, barely clad bodies being painted, I did a full owl on his back, then an owl face on his chest. After the fact I was informed by my "friend" that the theme of the night was "Urban". I guess that owls are urban now.

Three Thursdays following the "Urban" body painting night were held at the Native Lounge. The second was "Surf", the third was "Student", which I attended as a guest of my friend and New Times reporter Glen Starkey, and the fourth was the "Finale". I was invited to participate in the Finale and fortunately was able to go through the entire process from the selection of models to being able to hear the theme of the night. The Finale's theme was "The Dark Arts" as a special guest/magician was to wow us with some incredible, death defying performance. I had planned to create an exotic type piece, something Ganesha-ish, so when I discovered that the theme was to be the Dark Arts my vision suddenly shifted towards India's favorite dark goddess of creation, Kali. I chose out of all of the bikini clad models Sharai, a large-eyed, sweet girl of twenty-one. I began to imagine her reaction to what I was going to transform her body into as I painted demon heads and skulls all over her bod. Thankfully Sharai was totally open-minded and up for what I did. I had hoped to paint more than one model that day but what I thought would only take four hours turned into eight plus. She looked amazing as so many of the other models did. One of the most interesting participants that I met during this event was Brittany App, photographer extraordinaire. She was covering Embodiment for London's "Skin Deep", http://www.skindeep.co.uk/a tattoo magazine. Brittany not only was shooting photos and writing, but she painted a body, then modeled for the Finale. To my delight and excitement Brittany has included my piece with Sharai as Kali in the May, 2010 article!

Photographs courtesy of Richard Fusillo and Brittany App