Taylor Pless

BFA ’20 Painting and Drawing
BA ’20 Multidisciplinary Studies Art Histories

Chronic Urticaria: Beneath the Surface
To see more of my artwork and what I have been up to, please visit my Instagram: @taypless !

I was diagnosed with Idiopathic Chronic Urticaria in late 2018. Chronic Urticaria is the medical term for chronic hives and ‘idiopathic’ means that there isn’t a clear medical reason why it happens. The symptoms vary from person to person, which adds to the unpredictability of the illness. My hands, feet, arms, and legs are the most affected. The hives appear mostly overnight, and my mornings consist of questions such as: ‘How bad are they’ and ‘How can I work with them’ ? These questions have led me to my current body of work.

Before my illness, I needed to be in control of both my artwork and life. After it, I found that I could no longer control everything, because my health was beyond my control. Using photographs of my flare-ups as reference, my paintings serve as a ‘medical journal, documenting the areas of my body where the hives have been the most constant. I painted forty-five pieces of varying sizes, wanting to depict the overwhelming qualities that are associated with Chronic Urticaria. I use black and red acrylic paint; the red representing the urgency of the symptoms and the black designates the neutral, normal, planes of the infected body.

Through painting, I have learned to work with my illness, and I am not afraid of the flare-ups anymore. I found a community of Chronic Urticaria sufferers that have been a great support throughout painting these works, as well as a comfort to me personally because they live with the illness too. In the end, this show became more than just about myself and it became a homage to the people who live with the illness every day and to those who still fear their symptoms.

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For this show, I created forty-five pieces because I wanted them to overwhelm the viewer as the illness has done to me and to many others. All of the pieces are on Masonite and have been raised off the wall from 3” to 5.” I did this to make the work seem like it were invading the gallery space—an oddity trying to overpower its surroundings. This is how Chronic Urticaria can feel and I hoped that it would convey discomfort. The wall itself represents the skin and the paintings reflect the outbreak. The pieces are various sizes, the smallest being 12”x16” and the largest being 4’x3’. Due to covid-19 my show did not get installed in a gallery, but I created a virtual wall for them. I wanted them to go up on the gallery wall randomly, creating a world of chaos, and the virtual wall accomplished this.