Ana Benaroya
My work begins with the idea of feeling generally powerless in
the world as a woman. When I was young, I really identified with
the bodies of superheroes and athletes. I’d collect basketball
cards, Marvel and DC Comics, and I’d faithfully try and draw and
copy them. It was through this that I developed an interest in the
masculine muscular body. It was the body I almost exclusively
drew and depicted. And it’s through this body that I reimagined
how I could start to depict women in my work. I imagine these
women as physically, emotionally, spiritually, and sexually
powerful. Their body and their emotional tenor is at its most
extreme moment of operatic drama.
And it is through these depictions of women that I find myself
extending my own understanding of my body and my power as
a woman. Each time I paint a new figure I feel that I am able to
extend myself through them.