CORN NUDES

WOODCOCK on August 7, 2026

I’ve been thinking a lot about combining two themes I’ve been exploring: corn and nudes.

Along the way, I’ve been collecting thoughts, phrases, images and ideas about where that combination might lead. This is a live document. It may eventually grow to include more complete ideas for individual pieces, but for now it’s a place to dump all the little nuggets I collect before they fall out of my head and disappear forever.

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  • uncanny orderliness of the Midwest
  • The nude selfie is a body disciplined into an image.
  • The weeds in the ditch are more representative of what this place naturally is than the cornfield.
  • offensively benign.
  • Each becomes this tiny interruption in an otherwise absurdly controlled biological surface.
    • a grain elevator
    • a farmhouse
    • a water tower
    • a turbine
    • an interstate overpass
    • a utility pole
    • an abandoned silo
    • a billboard
    • a church steeple
    • a little copse of trees
    • a drainage ditch
    • a single volunteer plant
    • a deer standing at the edge
    • a highway sign
    • a motel sign
    • a truck stop sign
  • Piekets are rows of corn stencils
    • rows of kernels on top of row of plants
    • the gaps betwen pickets could reveal chaos of weeds.
    • each picket could have a different scale, colors, background color,
  • And corn itself doesn’t have to be the villain.
    • Corn didn’t do anything.
    • We did.
    • Poor stupid adorable corn.
  • CROP
    • top of plant that is cut off (corn)
    • cutting edges of an image (selfies)
    • same origin – crop the plant to get the product (corn), crop a photo to get the product (tits)
  • FIELD
    • manufactured reality
    • straight
    • distant
    • repetitive
    • orthogonal
    • vast
    • hard-edged
    • public
    • industrial
  • NUDE
    • crooked
    • close
    • awkward
    • foreshortened
    • intimate
    • fragmentary
    • soft
    • private
    • LOOK AT THIS BODY.
    • vs
    • LOOK AT WHAT THIS PERSON DECIDED TO SHOW YOU.
    • The missing information becomes as important as the visible information.
      • Face outside frame.
      • One breast.
      • Part of stomach.
      • Shoulder disappearing.
      • Bathroom mirror.
      • Bed sheet.
      • Doorway.
      • Flash reflection.
      • A hand holding clothing aside.
      • The strange distortion produced by a phone held too close.
      • Light blowing out part of the body.
      • Blackness swallowing another.
      • And that wonderful accidental geometry created because the photograph wasn’t composed as Art.
      • It was composed as communication.
  • Vertical seams/pickets could become:
    • corn rows
    • phone-screen divisions
    • agricultural property lines
    • body fragmentation
  • There’s also a vocabulary emerging here.
  • Not necessarily titles. Just words I’d put on your studio wall:
    • CROP
    • FIELD
    • YIELD
      • A field yields.
      • A body yields.
      • A photograph yields an image.
      • An investment yields a return.
      • A person yields control.
    • EXPOSURE
    • CULTIVATED
    • VOLUNTEER
    • SELECTED
    • HYBRID
    • FEED
    • FERTILE
    • DESIRABLE
    • PRODUCT
    • GRADE
    • CHOICE
    • FLESH
    • ACRE
    • BUSHEL
    • BODY
    • PROPERTY
    • BOUNDARY
    • CONTROL
  • looking at things long enough that the familiar becomes strange.
  • an adorable little ear of corn—the most harmless fucking thing imaginable—becomes the smiling mascot sitting on top of an enormous machine for turning land into product.
  • Both the corn and the nude are cultivated images.
  • unruly biological thing
  • The edge where bedroom becomes field could have the same razor-straight quality you noticed along Illinois roads.
    • nude, corn Hard edge
    • weeds invade the nude’s space.
    • the weeds are echoed in the crack between the corn pickets
  • Pin up is commodity, corn is commodity…unnatural, cultivated, manufactured
    • she holds corn, advertises corn, is corn
    • on top of weeds, over lapped, dropped on, displacing
    • Make her beautifully cultivated.
    • Pinup language.
    • Commercial photography.
    • Maybe even some of your Sailor-Jerry vocabulary creeping in.
    • Smooth skin. Lovely breast. Perfect curve.
    • And behind her:
      • ditch
      • collapsed grain elevator
      • rust
      • concrete
      • weeds
      • utility infrastructure
      • scrub trees
      • power lines
      • Corn.
      • Pinup.
      • Silo.
      • Weeds.
      • Angel.
      • Turbine.
      • Breast.
      • Grain elevator.
      • Banner.
      • Farmhouse.
      • Cloud.
      • Utility pole.
      • Heart.
      • Highway sign.
    • Now she’s functioning almost exactly like the perfect corn.
    • She’s the desirable product sitting in front of everything required to manufacture desirability.
  • LANDSCAPE
    • 48 × 36″ vertical
    • A woman’s torso is cropped so aggressively that it’s initially almost abstract.
    • Tiny grain elevator.
    • Tiny wind turbine.
    • Tiny farmhouse.
    • The scale relationship makes absolutely no physical sense.
    • Intimate body / enormous landscape.
    • The thing photographed from twelve inches away and the thing seen from twelve miles away occupy the same plane.
  • WOOD
    • vertical wood strips forming the panel.
    • Some stop.
    • Some extend.
    • Some are slightly misaligned.
    • Corn rows cross them.
    • Body crosses them.
    • Wild vegetation appears in the seams.
    • Maybe certain passages remain bare wood.
    • The object itself begins exhibiting:
      • cultivation / interruption / repair / boundary / fragmentation.
    • toward the less precious painting language without artificially “painting looser.”
  • BREASTS
    • Biological.
    • Sexual.
    • Nutritional.
    • Commercialized.
    • Private.
    • Publicly regulated.
    • Desired.
    • Embarrassing.
    • Motherly.
    • Pornographic.
    • Completely ordinary anatomy.
    • exploitation?! They are sexual images!
      • The woman who sends someone a titty pic knows she’s creating a sexual image.
      • The recipient knows it.
      • The little charge created by that exchange is part of the subject
      • Sanitizing that would actually disrespect the phenomenon
    • interested in
      • sexual agency
      • desirability
      • presentation
      • cropping
      • transaction
      • commodification
      • the construction of an image,
      • rather than simply saying I enjoy looking at naked women, therefore I painted some.
        • Corn doesn’t excuse the nudity.
        • Corn complicates it.
        • And the nudity complicates the corn.
  • That’s the double-good-idea thing
  • avoid art school surrealism, clear environmental activism, ham handed narratives, just superimposing imagery and letting people figure it out. Keep distinct. Crisp distinction. Not blending and melting.
  • Tit pic selfie with an ear of corn in hand instead of phone.

Every grain elevator is painted as though it’s the steeple of a cathedral devoted to industrial agriculture.

CONSTRUCTION

  • Instead of layering, have the different picket cutouts meet with a clean edge like a puzzle
  • pickets can be held with a think panel behind glued and tacked on
  • imagery on panel bleeds through
  • Precision isn’t the problem.
  • Predetermination might be.

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Keep digging, WOODCOCK 🪏