Based from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, painter Sarah Bereza has worked for the past few years with images of sorority girls. Having been a member of the conservative Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority at the University of Michigan, she’s gone on to construct her “Feisty Foxy Vixens” with intriguing erotic allusions. She often paints herself and her friends in scenarios of camaraderie, sex and social uproar.
Gallery: Sorority Girls
Q: How would you describe your approach to painting sorority girls suggestively?
A: The mood of a painting is something I always think about before I start. Once I have the central narrative, I then pick the appropriate model and construct a scene around her to create the piece. The suggestive nature of my work is never meant in a disrespectful way – I really worship all of the women that I paint. I'm a former sorority girl, after all, and much of my work features friends.
Q: Have certain social instances when you were in a sorority yourself influenced your imagery?
A: Sure, I lived in a plantation-style mansion with 64 girls and many were from privileged backgrounds. I always put myself in committees, I participated in Greek Week and went to all the football games and frat parties. There was so much material there. The drama was always at a fever pitch between bitchy, prissy and larger-than-life girls in the house.
Q: What was it like constructing your “Feisty Foxy Vixens,” the altered facial expressions of the girls?
A: It was three straight months of watching porn. I scoured the Internet looking for porn stars to match to the girls. I tried to even match the personalities of the girls I knew to the type of orgasm the porn star was having. It was exciting because it was the first in the sorority girl genre. I'd gotten bored painting landscapes, so I decided to paint something I know.
Q: What do you think of your pillow fight imagery?
A: It's funny to talk about this piece now, because the friends featured in the pillow fight actually had a girl-on-girl impromptu wrestling match when we were out last weekend. The sorority girls having a pillow fight: it's a fantasy for men, this is what sorority girls do after hours. There's a light, fun aspect to the fight, but underneath there's violence. If you look closely, one of the girl’s legs looks like it's going to snap. I think in another few years I will get the same girls together and repeat the triptych, and then do the same again in 10 years until I have amassed a large group of these paintings depicting the aging pillow fighters.
Q: Would you see yourself in your imagery?
A: One of the girls in the pillow fighting piece is me. Every painting I do is some sort of a self-portrait.
Q: As you’ve said you’re interested in psychological portraiture, is there a certain image you’ve constructed you feel drawn to?
A: This is going to sound awful, but I get the most emotion from my self-portraits. I can feel distance when I am painting someone else, but painting myself always takes a lot out of me and makes me feel weird in a way I am not sure I can describe when I look at them. I think if I always painted myself it would lose its allure, but since it’s one every few years it almost seems like I am checking up on my features and mental stability. I painted myself crying once and it made me want to cry the entire duration of painting it. It helps getting the brush strokes right when you are feeling the pose, but it also just made me sad to the bone for looking so pathetic and exposed.
Q: What have your sorority sisters thought about your work?
A: The ones I'm still friends with think it's hilarious and wonderful. I did get an email once from a long-lost sister that included a picture of her son. I responded with an image of her in “Feisty Foxy Vixens” and never heard back. I guess the jury is still out on that one.
Q: What do you think of the setting in your painting Mammoth Painting? It seems something imposing with the girl, related to academic infrastructure.
A: I was walking through the Natural History Museum and took a look at the mastodon skeleton. I saw what looked like a cunt to me on the mammoth's skull. The tusks became a woman's splayed legs. It was a powerful erotic image and that is what spurned the painting.
Q: You’ve created a series of oval portraits called “The Conquests” and they’re placed in interesting horned frames?
A: Yes, I did about eight of these. They are really effective when they are hung together. Instead of a hunter’s taxidermied trophies, it's the trophy wall of a man and his one-night stands or "conquests." The women are responding accordingly with their facial expressions.
Q: If their facial expressions are in orgasmic throes ... what do you think of working with associations of seduction as implied in the notion of conquest?
A: Seducing someone can be like stalking prey.
Q: If you’ve looked at porn sites in terms of looking for depictions of facial arousal, have you been interested in how sorority girls are sexualized in the media? I only had to google for “sorority girl” and terms like “hot,” “sexy,” and “recovery” came up at the start.
A: I think this concept is tied into how we as a culture sexualize and stereotype certain kinds of women. The sorority girls depicted in the media are nothing like what I know. Real sorority girls are grittier and dirtier. I also don't think any of us were old enough back then to have our sexuality fully realized within ourselves. Basically we were a bunch of crazy jerks – in a great way.
Q: Are you interested in what social salacious mythos is attached to sorority groups?
A: I like the word “salacious.” It’s the whole reason I started painting sorority girls. I would mention I was in a sorority and people would very quickly become intrigued, most certainly due to the social salacious mythos that you mention, and I realized this was the perfect subject matter to paint.
Q: I like the nude you’ve done with the egg shells and yolk trickling down her body [Pastoral Landscape with Chickens]. Are you interested in art-historical approaches to exposed figures?
A: That painting was a nod to Flemish painters. I get a lot of my inspiration from walking through the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The religious iconography in Renaissance paintings translates quite easily to my idolatry of the woman and sorority girls in my paintings. That is also the reason I introduced the ornate, classical frame into my paintings, which I hand-carve.
Q: There’s a sense of a sort of a leisured, luxuriant quality that runs through some of your imagery, like Laurel and her Pussycat and The Look of Love. What do you think of the tinge of trophy fantasy in this work?
A: A few years back, I was fascinated by women with major financial freedom – women who've never had to work a day in their life. They were prevalent in the sorority and in the Upper East Side where I used to live.
Q: What do you think is interesting about exploring the appearances of women with extreme financial privilege?
A: In a way, these women aren't necessarily in extreme financial privilege. I think they would like you to believe that they are well-to-do, but they may be totally a mess underneath. That is interesting to me. I think painting women in those situations leads to a more lush, florid atmosphere which is much more fun to paint. I feel that all paintings are successful when they evoke some sort of eroticism. As a friend of mine says, "It’s all sex and geometry."
Q: I’m curious what you might make of a show like Gossip Girl and its take on the relational lifestyle of upper-class sorority girls.
A: I love Gossip Girl, but I am not sure it has anything to do with me. Or anyone for that matter. It’s a fun soap.
Q: You’ve depicted good girls and you’ve said they “enjoy a buffer zone of decadence.” What do you think of the qualities of style you see with your good girls, like with pearls?
A: I only include what is necessary in each painting. Every accessory has its own symbolic connotation, especially the pearl necklace. Also, if I am dealing with subject matter that may have a gloomy feel, I like to mask it with decadence. People tend to take what they want from my paintings and I like that. It is not necessary for my point to shine through in each piece. I appreciate it when people bring their own interpretation.
Q: How do you think the allure of your naughty girls differs?
A: Every woman can be a good girl or a naughty girl on a given day. Sometimes it's the good girls you have to watch our for. They are the same person to me.
Q: Are you interested in considering the sorority experience and how it affects women over time?
A: I always paint from a personal narrative. From the outside, a man seems simple but I will never claim to know what really goes on in their heads. I paint what I know. The age of my models will probably increase with mine.
Q: What’s coming up next for you?
A: The series I'm working on right now is something I'm really excited about. Obviously my women of privilege will have to give up some of their creature comforts with the economic downturn. I've been collecting stories of women who've lost their jobs and now have nothing to do but wander aimlessly around the house. Some of them are having to make do with vocations at home, some of them have picked up strange habits. This series should be ready by the fall.
Q: It's interesting you're working on imagery involving women who have been affected by the current economic downturn. Will these images be eroticized in some ways?
A: I think so. I have a feeling I will be the only one who will notice any difference. We shall see. In a way women who are ladies of leisure and women without a job have some things in common when it comes to having a lot of time on your hands and what you do with that time to break up the day.
More info: www.sarahbereza.com
Louise Bak is a poet, with books including Tulpa and Gingko Kitchen. She co-hosts Sex City, Toronto’s only radio show focused on relations between sexuality and culture (CIUT 89.5 FM). Her performance work has appeared in numerous spaces and in video collaborations such as Partial Selves and Crimes of the Heart.