Carolyn Roper is a world-class bodypainter and makeup artist. Check out her work in a TV commercial for the Irish National Lottery.
Check out her website for galleries of amazing bodies and a new video of her re-creating the Mystique makeup from X-Men for a movie promotion in the UK. http://www.getmadeup.com/
Meeting, taking classes with, and working beside an artist like Carolyn is the type of “formative experience” I was speaking of in the previous post that helps explain why I bodypaint. Her fantastic work, her professionalism and the career she has carved out for herself are an inspiration.
Carolyn also did me a very nice favor when the Kryolan company brought me to Seeboden, Austria to demonstrate for them at the 2009 World Body Painting Festival. She introduced me to two artists whose work I had long admired, Craig Tracy and Filippo Ioco, who were there as judges for the competition. Filippo’s iconic photographs placing painted bodies in scenic environments were some of the first bodyart images I saw that were undeniably within the canon of “fine art”. http://iocobodyart.com Craig Tracy has probably done more to elevate bodypainting as an art form in the U.S. than anyone else, including opening the first art gallery solely devoted to bodypainting http://www.craigtracy.com/ — and he is very encouraging to those of us looking to elevate our own work. The encouragement gained through interactions with other bodypainters is invaluable when you are working in an art form seen as strange or “fringe”, or maybe “emerging” (on a good day). In the U.S., where bodypainting is only now starting to enter more widely into mainstream advertising, commercial promotions and corporate events, it has been especially helpful to see and learn from people like Craig and Filippo, and the body artists from Europe like Carolyn, who have achieved a level of professional success as specialists within the larger fields of makeup artist and fine artist.
Having previously won the World Championship in the “Brush and Sponge” division in 2007, Carolyn Roper became the first artist to win a championship in two different categories when she won in the Special Effects division at that 2009 festival— and I was very happy to be there to see my friend win.
The most fun thing I have ever done in this unusual business was when I got to paint onstage alongside Carolyn and another colleague, Emma — but I’ll leave that to the next post.
Caroyln, with the assistance of Paula Southern, preparing her award winning Special Effects design. She creates her unique sculptural additions by hand
Her model, Barry Bloomfield, presenting the completed design in competition
The completed model on stage.
My favorite photo from the event, seeing Carolyn smile, standing with Paula on the side of the stage, as she watches Barry present her fantastic work of art
Related Articles:
- Why Body Paint? – 1: Collaboration – Painting the Mangbetu Queen (thestorybehindthefaces.com)
- “Facepainting” or “Face Painting”? The Medium is the Message (thestorybehindthefaces.com)
- Why Body Painting? – 1B: Collaboration in Action – UV Action Painting with Emma Cammack and Carolyn Roper (thestorybehindthefaces.com)
- Why Body Painting? – 4: Radical Act – The essential celebration of our humanity / the ultimate modern art (thestorybehindthefaces.com)
- Why Body Painting? – 2: Ultimate Collaboration – MODELS, Pt.1 What I have learned from models. (thestorybehindthefaces.com)
- Why Body Painting? – 2: Ultimate Collaboration – MODELS, Pt.2: Just how much a model can help, Amber and Kuniyoshi at FABAIC 2011 (thestorybehindthefaces.com)
- Why Body Painting? – 3A: Origins – Why did we start painting ourselves? Ancient bodypainting kit discovered at Blombos Cave (thestorybehindthefaces.com)
- Craig Tracy’s Body Art (moillusions.com)