This week we're taking a closer look at one of Carolee Schneemann’s paintings for our #SundaySpotlight ✨ Although most well-known for her work in other media – performance, installation and film – Schneemann was also a talented painter 🎨 In the 1990s she declared ‘I’m a painter. I’m still a painter and I will die a painter.’ This is a portrait of her lover James Tenney surrounded by multiples of Kitch the cat, and has a restless, bold energy to it. She met composer Tenney in 1955, and they spent the next 13 years together as partners and artistic collaborators🖌 Her opening words when she first met Tenney were: ‘I’m a painter and I treat space as if it’s time.’ He replied: ‘I’m a musician and I treat time as if it [were] space.’ When Schneemann produced this painting in 1957, it caused quite a stir with Tenney’s peers. They thought the naked pose was emasculating. Schneemann had a very different view – she saw their relationship as one of equals, celebrating the human body🌟 Her time spent with Kitch the cat lasted even longer. Living for 20 years, Kitch featured in many of her works, from paintings to performances to films. Schneemann saw the cats that she lived with as companions and co-conspirators, rather than pets to be owned. She said herself, ‘THE CAT IS MY MEDIUM’ 🐈‍⬛ Image credit: Courtesy of the Carolee Schneemann Foundation and Galerie Lelong & Co., Hales Gallery, and P·P·O·W New York and © 2022 Carolee Schneemann Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / DACS, London.