This Woman Is Spending The Pandemic Painting Nudes of Friends — Then Mailing Them to Strangers
“I figured the world is ending and all.”
By Jessie Schiewe
Yes, you can mail boobs.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, Xue Davis’ Instagram page was filled with succulents and snakes.
These days, it’s plastered with nudes.
To pass the time since she began self-quarantining, the neuroscientist has been painting and posting naked portraits of her friends and followers based off of photos they send her. Using a mishmash of art supplies, the 33-year-old East Coaster brings their sexy snaps to life, faithfully recreating their bodies on the fronts of postcards before mailing them out to those who have asked to receive them.
“It's funny because people who either know me very well or not at all are like:
‘Fuck yes! Here’s five nudes to choose from. Pick your fave,’ ” Davis told OK Whatever.
“But people who are more in between are like:
‘Can I...Can I send you my ass? Is this weird? Will you think I'm weird?’ ”
Davis has actually exchanged weird things with strangers before. A few years ago, when she lived in Philadelphia, her freezer was full of dead birds that she’d collect for an ornithologist at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University to help with his research.
Since she began drawing quarantine nudes, Davis has averaged about four portraits a day. Most of the photo submissions she’s received have been of women, though she was recently sent a full-frontal of a man with a dish towel flopped over his face.
“I’ve been really impressed at what people are sending: a lot of thoughtful, creative, beautifully lit photos in which they just happen to be naked,” Davis said. “I feel fortunate to be trusted with these photos and I try my best to do them justice.”
In a recent Instagram post, she hinted that her quarantine nudes were simply a short-term project to entertain her during these unusual times. “I will go back to posting mostly plants probably when I run out of nudes, but I figured the world is ending and all,” she wrote on April 5th.
In the meantime, the project has given Davis something to do besides work or compulsively read the news. It has also improved her mental health.
“I'm a depression sleeper so I mostly stay in bed trying to be unconscious for as much time as possible every day. This helps me get out of bed, mostly, and I do find it fun to be drawing again.”
Davis — who took an introductory drawing class and a Japanese woodblock course in college — is humble about her skills and former artistic aspirations.
“I considered it briefly, like any emo kid who doodled a lot in high school, but mostly I just liked drawing to decompress and kill time.”
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In college, she painted the walls of her bedroom during her senior year, and she’s been told there’s still a mural of hers from 2005 in one of the dorms.
“My old art professor actually follows me on Instagram. So I get embarrassed because I constantly imagine him being disappointed in me,” she joked.
And it’s not like painting under quarantine is easy. Without the ability to go to the store to pick up supplies, Davis has had to make do with the odd assortment of mediums already in her home.
“I have eight old markers that I blend out with water, some Sharpies, and some pencils. I borrowed a set of colored pencils from a coworker, and a couple of the postcards I even drew on with eyeliner. That's why a lot of the colors are so weird: It’s literally all I have available.”
It also doesn’t help that Davis recently gave away “a really nice set of color brush pens” to an artsy teenage girl. The set had been a Christmas gift from her in-laws, and at the time that she gave them away, Davis had been “convinced [she] would never get around to using them.” Clearly, she was wrong.
But though her artistic endeavors are a relatively new addition to her life, sending mail is not. Davis has been writing postcards to people “for years and years,” so she is well-stocked with paper. She also has plenty of stamps thanks to a particularly serendipitous dumpster dive she took a few years ago.
“I pulled them out of somebody’s trash,” she said, adding that it was “probably a college kid moving out.”
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Sending nude postcards is a bold move. There’s always the slight possibility that a post office will refuse to deliver them due to their publicly viewable graphic imagery.
But it’s a risk Davis is willing to take.
“I do wonder whether all of them will manage to go through, but that’s part of the fun of it, I guess,” she said.
(@mauspad)
She’s really only felt nervous about one postcard on which she drew a fully-nude woman from the front. That one she put in an envelope because she “highly suspected that it had a higher than average chance of being ‘lost’ or stickered over.”
In fact, the subversive aspect of making quarantine nudes is one of her favorite aspects of the project. It’s a chance for all the sexy selfies buried in the depths of our phone’s to finally see the light of day.
“It’s a real shame that these really nice shots are automatically considered indecent just because they're not wearing clothes,” Davis said.
“I mean think about it, why do people take nudes anyway? Because they feel good about how they look, and it feels good to have your body be appreciated. But you're not supposed to be proud of them or just put them out there like this.”
With each nude she posts, Davis is slowly chipping away at these ingrained preconceptions. Her only regret is that sometimes she feels she can’t do the photos justice.
“I find it really hard to make close-ups of body parts that look like actual body parts, especially areas like boobs and butts that have a soft roundness. You have to be more careful with light and shading to make sure it’s recognizable. With a full figure, I can afford to be a little more bold and hasty, which is my preferred way of sketching.”
On the whole, Davis seems proud of most of the works she’s put out, and if she feels weird about any of them, she has no qualms saying so.
“OK I STRUGGLED A LOT WITH THESE” is how she captioned one of her earlier posts.
(@mauspad)
With time and more practice, though, her feelings toward her art will likely change. In fact, they might already have.
Under yesterday’s post, featuring four different women in various stages of undress, Davis wrote: “Not gonna lie, I kind of love today’s batch.”
Want to send Davis a nude of yourself or receive one in the mail? Send your photo and/or mailing address through Instagram direct message to @mauspad.
JESSIE SCHIEWE IS THE EDITOR OF OK WHATEVER. SHE BELIEVES IN MERMAIDS AND THRIFT SHOPS FOR EXERCISE.
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