Tori Swanson at work. Photo by Britt Gill.

By Brittany Tiplady
@yellowbird888

I don’t do naked. I avoid full-length mirrors, I only take baths in a very dimly lit bathroom, I really would shower with my clothes on if I could. I’ve never once enjoyed—like so many memes discuss—being at home with no pants on. I like pants! In fact, I wear pants until it’s 35 degrees and I can no longer bear the fabric. I’ve never in my life slept naked (I prefer some flannel between me and the sheets). You get the jist: I like to be fully clothed.

So, naturally, I booked a nude portrait session with Vancouver artist, Tori Swanson, as part of her Talk To Me Naked series. But what was intended as research for this piece became catharsis.

Swanson’s early career was in fashion. At 20 years old, she was living in New York City, attending fashion school, working unhealthy hours, and battling an untreated eating disorder.

“My eating disorder really started when I was 18. It was from untreated anxiety that turned into depression, and that’s how I manifested anorexia and bulimia. I thought I was living the best life ever; I was going out with celebrities and finding myself at the right place at the right time, until I was just so unhappy I couldn’t get out of bed, I couldn’t sleep. So I moved home,” Swanson explains.

“Before New York, I had gone to Langara and done some art, and I ended up picking it back up, just as something my mom suggested [as part of my treatment]. I started painting and I would lock myself in my room for hours and just paint, paint, paint until I would fall asleep. It was my way of bringing that anxiety onto this blank canvas that was inviting me to share my feelings.”

Walking into her Mount Pleasant studio, I’m 70 per cent butterflies, and 30 per cent babbling idiot. Swanson greets me at the studio entrance. Hand to her belly she closes her eyes, “I can feel your nerves!” she exclaims. “It’s okay, everyone is always nervous.” She leads me into her space, as we get comfortable for a pre-portrait intuitive reading.

Naturally lit, her studio is something out of a film: delightfully smoky with incense, colourful line drawings of women’s bodies adorn the walls, the fall Main Street sunshine catching the fog. I ease into my chair, Tori cracks open her journal, riddled with sentences she’s scrawled before my arrival.

We go in.

I didn’t anticipate becoming emotionally nude before actually stripping down, but that’s what happens. I’ll spare you the heavy details, but Swanson’s articulate portrait of my life brought me, and her, to tears. It’s a visceral reaction as she touches delicately on past traumas, my complicated health, the creative roadblocks I’m hitting, the gift of partnership that I am blessed with. Opening the portrait session with an intuitive reading is not only a brilliant millennial business tactic and meditative ice-breaker, it’s also incredibly indicative of Swanson’s warm nature, not only as a psychic, but as an artist that has chosen a rather vulnerable medium to pursue.

“I was always been a psychic kid,” Swanson says. “I’ve always been connected to that [other world] and I’ve always been able to see spirits, but I didn’t know how to deal with it so I just shut it off. Before I started this full-time, I started to have these episodes where I knew there was a change coming. There was a lot of energy present around me. I’d be home and wake up in the middle of the night to [the feeling of] someone standing at the side of my bed or I was hearing things or things were flying off the shelf, so there was a lot of activity that was trying to get my attention.”

In her words, Swanson’s intention as an artist is to emancipate individuals from their fears to live a life full of expression. So I face mine and disrobe.

We continue to chat as Swanson poses me gently with her words; she works emphatically behind the easel, and as each portrait is finished, they float to the ground like the leaves outside the window, giving me a peek at our progress.

I can’t help but address my most curious question: what is this Talk To Me Naked project like for her? Does she feel nervous to walk back in the room, after her subject has stripped down? Will she notice the aggressive patch of cellulite on my outer thighs? Should I have gotten a wax? Does this work behoove her to ignore any judgements she may have of my ingrowns?

“At first, it was nerve racking, but now it’s not, it’s so easy. Every time I have someone in here, if I do start feeling nervous I just say to myself: ‘How can I be of service to this person?’ and it immediately separates my ego, and I’m at ease,” she says.

I realize, as I’m posed standing profile to Swanson’s canvas, that I’ve forgotten to suck in my belly; what I can assume, is the natural reaction for almost anyone when they are nude in front of a stranger. Suddenly the gravitas of this experience—being naked in the middle of an art studio—settles in and I am pregnant with a litany of emotion that could only be described as an overwhelming cocktail of pride and “how fucking cool is this?”

“Everything that flows through art isn’t me, it’s just channels of [energy] and I understand that now, and I understand that that’s my purpose: to help uplift other women,” she continues.

And just like that, we’re done.

I slink back into my clothes as Swanson lays her work out for me to thumb through. I’m anxious to see the final product; worried that I wouldn’t be able to hide my subsequent disappointment (and the full-fledged embarrassment for such unnecessary vanity) if the portraits showcase my most-hated “flaws.”

But they don’t. Swanson drew my body with an elegant, feminine lens. She illustrates the the curve of my back, the slope of my breasts, the hourglass shape of my hips. The portraits are sexy, but not performative or pornographic. They’re a direct reflection of the female gaze; a narrative of the divine feminine, carefully customized to me.

I ask Swanson if this project has altered how she views and treats her own body.

“I need to talk the talk and walk the walk. So, yes and it keeps me motivated to do even more. Every woman that decides to come here is a fucking rockstar. I’m the same as you, we have the same body and the same parts, so there’s no judgment; I do not whatsoever judge women, we judge ourselves enough that I would never allow that [energy] into this space,” she says.

Aside from booking Talk To Me Naked portraits (which she also offers to pregnant women and couples), Swanson commissions custom art pieces, hosts classes and workshops, and has now begun offering one-on-one business coaching sessions for entrepreneurs both independently and through Devon Brooks’ latest tech endeavour, Sphere.

“My business is growing in a lot of different directions,” Swanson explains. “I have the art component and that’s my first love, but I’m also expanding with offering more coaching and intuitive readings. I work with law of attraction and manifestation in the universe. A lot of what I do is love-centred and heart-centred.”

As we wrap up the interview, Swanson rolls up my three chosen portraits and I can’t help but feel besotted with these drawings of my own body. “So, you saw my soul, and then drew me naked, so I guess we’re best friends now?” I joke. We meet for a strong, grateful hug.

I walk back out into the fall sunshine feeling drunk with a gratitude and a little touch of, dare I say, self-love? I give myself permission to lean into that feeling for just a moment, emboldened by the vulnerability of our session.

Maybe, getting naked isn’t so bad afterall.

Brittany Tiplady is a writer, editor, ballet teacher, and the co-founder of Loose Lips Magazine. She loves the indoors, fast wifi, collecting maps, and a generous glass of red wine. She’s a self-proclaimed wizard of time management and a notorious loud talker with a penchant for all things Internet and pop culture.