The issue of art is an ongoing theme here at Popular Fidelity. For some, it’s the watercolors of a Monet. For others, it the explosion of color and texture of a Jackson Pollack painting reaching from the floor to the ceiling.

And for others, it’s the art of the body. Ariana Page Russell has a skin condition called dermatographia. There are times, after minor injury, that she breaks out into hives and red welts.

And then she paints them.

In a post at Neatorama, Russell is quoted from her own website saying this:

My own skin frequently blushes and swells. I have dermatographia, a condition in which one’s immune system exhibits hypersensitivity, via skin, that releases excessive amounts of histamine, causing capillaries to dilate and welts to appear (lasting about thirty minutes) when the skin’s surface is lightly scratched. This allows me to painlessly draw patterns and words on my skin, which I then photograph.

The photos are not only unique but interesting. How she takes a physical condition and creates a soft, unique and sometimes lovely image is not only unique, but surprisingly beautiful.

Art, as they say, is what you make of it. For Russell, she took her body revolting against her and made such visual beauty that it’s awe-inspiring.

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