Terry Gilliam, who was interviewed in the Love Bite documentary Love Bite: Laurie Lipton and Her Disturbing Black & White, said, "What she’s dealing with is what everybody has inside them in one form or another, and probably most people are frightened to recognise it. You put it down in the basement and keep the trap door shut." This brings up the idea that women often shut things down and keep emotions or experiences inside themselves because of social expectations and norms. Historically, women have been subjected to societal expectations that encourage them to be nurturing and self-sacrificing. Women are also often the victims of suppression of voice, and they fear the consequences of speaking out or expressing their true feelings.

“Love Bite” is a detailed charcoal drawing by Laurie Lipton. We can see so many details in it, like the strains of hair, the wrinkles, the nails, the veins, and the texture. It is a close-up of a woman’s face, her eyes wide open with an intense gaze, and the background is white and is filled with swirling patterns from the hair with dark, dramatic shading. The woman seems to be opening her mouth wide, seemingly about to bite into an apple, but she is holding a baby instead of an apple. The artwork is sometimes compared to Francisco Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Son," but both arts have different messages.

Love Bite focuses on the emotional and psychological complexity and intensity that woman had. The title may also add to the metaphorical significance. Instead of a physical mark on the skin that people would think of when they hear “love bite," a love bite could symbolise the emotional marks or scars left by love, resulting in the highs and lows and the complexities that come with deep emotional connections. The woman’s intense gaze demonstrates a depth of feeling and engagement with her emotions.

The woman’s direct gaze into the audience and the overall composition demonstrated a sense of agency and inner strength. However, the white background and the tangled elements may also hint at vulnerability, suggesting that emotional entanglements can involve both fragility and power. The art’s subject is a woman navigating the feminine experience, examining how women navigate the emotional landscape of their experiences. We could feel the strength of her gaze as it spoke to the emotional depth of her experiences. James Scott, the director of the documentary film, said that he can’t put “Love Bite” on the wall because some people feel frightened by it and ask him to put it down if he hangs it on the wall. This proves how impactful this drawing is with a woman as the subject for the audience.

Love Bite is an artwork that is open to interpretation. Lipton states that the audience could make the drawing personal and bring their own experience. However, I will try to relate it to Lipton’s experiences based on my research.

“I’m isolated. I’m in my head. I’m on this piece of paper. And what goes in between me and the paper... everything comes into my play, my entire life.”

Lipton challenges the stereotype that women need to suppress their emotions. Lipton uses art as a medium to express herself and cope with her trauma. In this statement, it shows how she resembles herself in every one of her drawings. However, when I did some research on the drawing, there were a lot of negative comments stating that the drawing was disturbing and asking her to stop producing something like this, which is sad because she uses it as a form of expression.

One of the platforms where we can see negative comments on the art is:

"LOVE BITE",4'6"x3'2", charcoal&pencil on... - Arts, Artists, Artwork | Facebook

“My father gave me radiograph pens when I was about nine or ten. And I used to take my little book into school with me and just draw. There’s a very hurt child in all my work. very alone, very confused, and out of it. And she is still in me.”

When Lipton was 5, she experienced a deeply disturbing incident that was to colour her whole life—or perhaps one should say to remove the colour from her whole life. Lipton was the victim of a horrific kidnapping. The man who kidnapped her just recently escaped from an insane asylum, and before her, he had molested two other children.

Lipton states, "It's just one crazy incident. One accident between this man and me That changed my entire life and perception because suddenly reality shifted. It jet-propelled me to the outside. My mother turned into something else. My life turned into something else. People were dangerous. Stuff was incomprehensible. Before then, I was fearless. I was fearless. And it made me an artist.

“I know this sounds very bizarre, but I’m grateful for it. I'm not grateful for the fact that this little girl suffered. I suffered. Little Laurie suffered. I’m very grateful. It’s odd, isn’t it? You never know. You never know what kind of gift comes out of suffering. You never know.”

This incident made her develop the style of macabre black-and-white drawings that now defines her unique and prolific body of work. For Lipton, black and white is the colour of ghosts, the colour of old television shows, and the colour of memories such as old family photographs. It is the colour of the past and longing, and it’s almost the colour of thought.

Lipton is an artist who stands out with surrealistic images and symbols that make life and death cycles entertaining by emphasising death themes in her works. Based on research by BATUR ÇAY, works by Laurie Lipton revolve around the theme of death, which she stated was created after her mother’s death (BATUR ÇAY). We can see the theme of death in the art if we imagine the consequences of the action by the woman in the drawing.

All these points bring to mind the idea of my interpretation of the art, which is about a woman experiencing and consuming all of these horrific experiences, but then it makes her become the person she is now, full of strength. The woman also has a heart shape on her earring and her nails. The shape of the heart could represent the centre of emotion. A study shows that women show greater emotional expressivity, especially for positive emotions, and internalise negative emotions such as sadness (Chaplin). Therefore, I think this drawing could relate to every woman who has experienced something that they need to consume, even if it is hard, which makes them stronger. 

“I’m very grateful. It’s odd, isn’t it? You never know. You never know what kind of gift comes out of suffering. You never know.”

-Laurie Lipton

BATUR ÇAY, Meral. “Sürreali̇st Ressam Lauri̇e li̇pton’un resi̇mleri̇ndeki̇ Semboller.” İnönü Üniversitesi Kültür ve Sanat Dergisi, vol. 7, no. 2, 2021, pp. 238–248, https://doi.org/10.22252/ijca.1029513.

Chaplin, Tara M. “Gender and Emotion Expression: A Developmental Contextual Perspective.” Emotion Review : Journal of the International Society for Research on Emotion, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Jan. 2015, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4469291/#R15.

Scott, James, director. Love Bite: Laurie Lipton and Her Disturbing Black & White Drawings. Vimeo, https://vimeo.com/356729842. Accessed 29 Nov. 2023.