Alexa Meade takes an innovative approach to art. Not for her a life of sketching and stretching canvases. Instead, she selects a topic and then paints it--literally. She covers everything in a scene--people, chairs, food, you name it--in a mask of paint that mimics what's below it. In this eye-opening talk Meade shows off photographs of some of the more outlandish results, and shares a new project involving people, paint and milk.

Your body is my canvas

Art can leap off the canvas and transform reality itself. By painting directly onto people, furniture, and even food, a three-dimensional scene becomes a two-dimensional illusion captured in a simple photograph—no Photoshop required. One experiment involved turning a friend into a living greyscale portrait, while another used milk as an unpredictable and ever-changing canvas. These explorations reveal how looking beneath the surface and embracing the unexpected can lead to astonishing new forms of expression.

Turning Living People Into Paintings Breaks Reality’s Boundaries

Gallery: Is that a painting or a photograph?

creativity