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“I have always drawn women. I can remember when I was three or four, drawing a Barbie-like character based on my mother, although Barbie Dolls didn’t exist until I was 10 years old.

Two decades later, trying to figure how to support a fledgling fine art career, I created a portfolio of black and white Aubrey Beardsley-inspired women. They emerged from this female character I’d drawn all my life, but now she was sexually amplified by the liberated 60’s, and inspired by choreographer Bob Fosse, master of jazz burlesque choreography.

I was fascinated by the bizarre, exaggerated moves, the bawdy comedy of it. My characters were mentally animated by his dancers, as I drew women in black and white, like the notes on sheet music.”

- Olivia De Berardinis via her bio