Don't tell me that Evelyn is not beautiful

Evelyn

I first posted this picture three years ago at a time when it received coverage in the national press. The portrait, by Suffolk artist Heath Rosselli, is of Evelyn Saterlee.

It was going to be displayed at the Louvre as part of an exhibition 'the changing face of breast cancer'.  It lined up  beside Rembrandt's  famous painting Bathsheba At Her Bath.

Simply titled Evelyn, the portrait was a way of showing that life goes on. 'The whole point of doing it in the first place was to remove the stigma attached to mastectomies and the idea that people think it is grotesquely disfiguring,' Said Miss Rosselli. 'I wanted my portrait to show it is not an ugly thing.... The aim of the painting was to show that Evelyn remains a beautiful and whole woman, enjoying a full life, a happy marriage, and good health.'

When the portrait was first unveiled in 1997, Mrs Satterlee said: 'I consider my missing breast as just a blemish - in the same way I think my thighs are too big and I have more wrinkles than I used to. Posing was a way of me saying that I am done with cancer now and that part of my life is now in the past.'

Damn I forgot to post this earlier but here is Heath's website

Heath Rosselli’s work is stunning and succeeds absolutely in portraying Evelyn Satterlee as the beautiful woman she is. 

Since I started to think more about Aliaa Elmahdy's brave stand, I have started to think more about perceptions of the human body, not least my own body.