Vice recently featured Bunny Lee on Creators and we knew we had to have more.
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Bronx-based artist Bunny Lee showcases women in touch with their sexuality through her paintings. Often nude and entirely sexual, her pieces express women through a woman’s eyes and there’s something raw and powerful about that:
Freckled, strong, plump-cheeked and unsmiling, these sexually-liberated women are living for themselves—not for you. Painted in cartoon colors, usually nude and often in rope bondage, their exhibitionistic poses and defiant faces challenge you to look again, and look closer this time. (Creators)
The 28-year-old New Yorker, who attended the High School of Art and Design in New York city, has been drawing all her life but was an admittedly bad student: “I was a terrible student, so I didn’t learn much there. I consider myself self-taught.”
Lee’s style is influenced by both anime and her fascination with rope binding, which she also practices in her own life. Both have informed her artwork, which is clearly evident in her drawings. As all artists’ work is wont to do, Lee’s work is expanding as she begins to explore new themes as of late. Her recent works feature eyes, snakes and swords.
Whatever ultimate (is there even a thing as ultimate?) direction Lee’s artwork decides to take, we are happy to be there for the ride. In a world in which society and men seem to dominate how women should look and – possibly even more detrimentally – how women look at themselves, we need more artists creating unapologetic artwork that empower the female sex.
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Read more about Lee on Creators.
Source: Creators, @bunnyleesworld