Mara Hesed began her formal training in 2006 with prominent LA artist Richard Shelton. She has participated in numerous group shows and private exhibitions in Los Angeles and nationally and has gained recognition for her oil painting.

Everyone is so afraid of the human body in art. In pop culture and fine art, we will represent almost any kind of ugliness or vulgarity before we allow nudity. And I suspect this is reflected in our current policital climate. I paint nakedness, especially women’s. I am compelled by the depth of humanity housed within the bodily form. The frank and beautiful depiction of the power of a woman’s body; images of vulnerability that don’t incite routine victimization or objectification; the sublimation of feminity in all its gritty complexity—this is the subject of my art.