The author and her husband, Mark, after being painted by Andy Golub. (Photo: Courtesy of Andy Golub)
I have come to an age where dignity should reign. As an elder, I should be a model of wisdom and restraint – rather than a nude model for a body painter. What possessed me?
Adventure was the main attraction. How would it feel to have my body be a canvas? Standing naked in front of an artist – a total stranger – for a few hours? Do something completely new?
Love was also a reason. My husband and I were going to paint together. The artist, Andy Golub, would take the two of us into one unit. For a few hours, Mark and I would stand naked against each other in a single pose while Golub covered us in paint. This felt like a beautiful way to celebrate our closeness. After 22 years of marriage, this would be a first!
I must admit that I also hoped to impress (perhaps scandalize) my friends and acquaintances. I’m not physically brave, but I try to be brave otherwise. As I age brutally, I’m often drawn to things that might be inappropriate for my age, like the red cowboy boots I’ve come to wear.
So when the opportunity arose to model for the man who more or less invented body painting as an art (as opposed to body painting as a ceremony and ritual), I didn’t think twice. Mark, although more conservative than me, also agreed without hesitation – as a triathlete he has very little body fat! I, older and less athletic, have some more, but I’m okay with my old body and was happy with the prospect of it being both the inspiration for and the actual material of art.
One Sunday afternoon, Andy Golub arrived at our house with his drop cloths and his paint and began to settle in my study, which gets good natural light. Now 55, he has been an artist since his adolescence, but it was not until he started body art at the age of 40 that he found his calling. While he also paints on walls, canvases, and cars, Andy is best known for his public body painting events, where he and his assistants paint hundreds of naked people in locations like New York’s Times Square. He has also held mass events in San Francisco, Zurich and Amsterdam. This year’s New York event will take place on July 24 in Union Square.
I don’t dare to get painted in public, but to do it at home with my husband, with the temperature raised to 78, was within my physical and mental comfort zones. Mark and I signed releases and then went to our bedroom to take off our clothes. Slowly, shyly, we walked back to the study. Andy didn’t look up – he put down his colors and brushes. He explained that he uses theatrical makeup, which is healthier and comes off more easily than real paint.
Andy looked around the room and put a rug on the couch. “Why don’t you go into that?” he proposed. I leaned on it like Madame Récamier in the Jacques-Louis David painting, and Mark joined me, leaning back himself. This was a relaxing and relatively humble pose for both of us. I no longer felt self-conscious.
The author and Mark in clothes – “what a concept!” she jokes. (Photo: Courtesy of Catherine Hiller)
Andy stared at us from many angles. He walked across the room. He sat down on a stool and looked at us from above. Then he went downstairs and began to paint a long green stripe across Mark’s left leg. He made a wide pink line next to the green one. The pink continued all over Mark’s body, down to his neck and onto my stomach. He painted a dark green band around Mark’s right thigh. Sometimes Andy muttered “orange” or “blue” before going to his colors. Sometimes his eyelids dropped as he looked at us before making a color decision.
“Are your eyes actually closed?” I asked.
“I’m channeling,” he replied.
He opened his eyes and chose purple, and the brush stroked our bodies. It felt light and smooth. An hour or so passed. He smeared white paint around my mouth and green paint on my forehead. He made little marks on our bodies in gray, ‘notes’ to himself so that we would take the same position after the upcoming break. Then we got up and stretched out. He took some photos of us holding hands, with patches of color and stripes all over our bodies, in the classic John and Yoko pose. We look very pleased with ourselves, although of course we hadn’t done anything at all.
We sat back on the couch, aligned ourselves with the little gray spots, and now the magic started. Using black paint and a thin brush, Andy began painting designs over the spots and patches of color that covered our faces and bodies. Mark got two eyes over his pecs and ripples on his shoulders. I have a snail on my stomach and diamonds on my thighs. Narrow black lines ran from Mark’s arm to my leg, melting our bodies into one colorful image. It was all very relaxing. After a while, Mark actually fell asleep.
Andy funds his work through contributions to his foundation, Human Connection Arts, but I saw a way he could make money more directly.
“Why not offer to paint young people as part of a wedding package?” I asked him. “They would have a lasting memory of themselves in their prime, linked by your art! It would be so original! I bet they will pay you thousands.”
“I’m not really interested in that,” he said. “I see my art as more connected to social activism. Performance art like body painting is about bringing people together. I enjoy connecting with my ‘canvas’ and inspiring people to think in new ways.”
Andy has painted and photographed people of all ages and types, including those with physical disabilities. All types of bodies are beautiful.
He finished painting and took some more pictures. Although I was still naked, I felt comfortable: the paint was a layer that hid my skin. It didn’t feel like he was photographing us exactly; rather it was as if he was documenting an entirely new entity – an amalgam of me and Mark and color and design. Mark and I looked at each other in surprise. Our bodies had become something beautiful.
The author and Marc. (Photo: Courtesy of Andy Golub)
After Andy left, Mark and I scrubbed each other in the shower. It was sad to see the colors swirling down the drain, but otherwise they would end up on our clothes, the furniture, and the sheets. Body painting is a temporary art, captured through photography.
I selected two photos from the ones Andy shared with us and cropped them a little judiciously. In the days that followed, I proudly showed them to my family and friends, who, I think, were relieved that the images were so colorful, so beautiful, and so… unerotic. This was not nudity to arouse desire: our bodies were just background. As for our faces, the color acted as a thick base to make us both look younger. No wonder I showed the photos to almost everyone I encountered!
I was reminded once again that I am more radical than most. I told a friend about getting my body painted, and she wrinkled her nose. And there are people I will never tell – people for whom nudity at any age is abhorrent. Moreover, the artist not only painted us, he painted On us, his brush against our skin. No, I will spare those people the mention of this special artistic encounter.
My three sons, however, are another matter. They know me well, are no longer ashamed of my actions and are somewhat unconventional themselves. So they weren’t the least bit surprised to learn that I had taken off my clothes to commemorate the moment and be part of a gifted artist’s vision. They just admired the photos.
Longtime married couples are sometimes urged to bring some excitement into their marriage by doing something new, exciting and challenging together. Getting our bodies painted was like this for us: a great new experience that felt a little tense.
Then we looked at each other with new eyes. We had been art for a brief, radiant moment.
Catherine Hiller’s sixth novel, “Cybill Unbound”, about the sexual adventures of an elderly woman, will be published on February 14, 2023. She is also the author of a short story collection, “Skin” (“Good, brave, and joyfulful fiction” – John Updike) and the controversial “Just Say Yes: A Marijuana Memoir.” Short pieces have appeared in the New York Times Sunday Review, AARP Magazine, Ms., the Girlfriend, NextTribe, the Westchester Review, and the Antioch Review. She is co-producer of the documentary ‘Paul Bowles: The Complete Outsider’.
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
