Amid physically enhanced portraits of 17th-century aristocrats and contemporary captains of industry, there have been exceptions to the rule, like Peter-Paul Rubens' inescapably real painting of the spongy flesh of his wife Helene Fourment -- just one example of a painter expressing all-forgiving love by embracing imperfection.

Contemporary realists like Lucian Freud and Jenny Saville, taking a more conceptual approach, have made their own reputations by painting fleshy, mottled bodies in the kind of raw detail that defies the usual painterly interest in unmarred, taut white skin and refined postures.

But 22-year-old self-taught Athens artist Sunaura Taylor may do them one better in her lush oil and watercolor portraits of physically unconventional subjects. Taylor not only paints with precocious skill, her disability requires that she paint holding a brush in her mouth, often while lying on the ground.

Read entire article at: Creative Loafing