Meet Our #COTW Stacey Combs – ‘I Want to Help People Realize They’re Not Alone’

ByEmily Thorpe

You can find the Gamut Art Gallery hiding among brick-and-mortar businesses and apartment buildings on South Street in Minneapolis. Filled to the ceiling with pieces meant to create wonder or help the artists themselves better understand life, the gallery shines in the midst of the Midwestern city’s gray winter.

Brighter still is #WCW Stacey Combs’ “Body Positivity” series. Block colors beam from her originals and small postcard prints alike. But it’s not just the colors and sharp lines that grab viewers’ attention, it’s the subject of the art itself: real women.

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Real bodies. In all their complicated and imperfect glory.

Although Combs has been a creator for as long as she can remember, she didn’t start taking herself seriously as an artist until two years ago.

“I was at the top of my art class in high school, and became derailed by the cost of education, fear, and guilt,” Combs said. “So I went to cosmetology school.”

While doing hair paid the bills, she didn’t feel passionate about it. Her artistry was put on hold for her career and a business degree, and then Combs’ father passed away.

“That experience taught me not to take anything for granted,” she said. “And also afforded me some financial stability to travel and invest in new art supplies.”

Nine years into her hairstyling career, that she decided to go all in on her art. Painting brought her a sense of importance – she felt valid, useful, and found that her art was giving her a chance to be heard.

Body image and mental health have always been important issues in Combs’ life, so its no surprise the two topics began creeping their way into her art.

“I want to help people realize they’re not alone,” she said. “So I guess love and care are my biggest influences.”

The spark for the “Body Positivity” series ignited after the 2016 election. Feeling furious and at a loss for what to do with herself, Combs began following feminist and social justice accounts on Instagram.<

The posts moved and inspired her, but what she created during the time was off the mark. The anger she felt, coupled with the injustice and constant frustration she was seeing online, gave her paintings an edge – one that was fueled by hate. Unsatisfied and unwilling to let anything but love come through her work, Combs set out to do something different.

“One night I was feeling particularly down about my body,” Combs said. “I took a shower and decided that maybe painting myself in my undies would make me feel a little better. It did. A little. So I posted it online and got really positive feedback and realized that maybe I could do that for other people, too.”

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There’s only so much one person can do, but with a brush and paint, Combs has created a golden nugget in a world that feels increasingly hostile and unwelcoming.

“I don’t want to beat anyone over the head with anything,” she said. “But I believe in equality and having/spreading compassion for yourself and others, and those ideas are very political, and unfortunately divisive right now.”

Combs periodically puts out a call for models, asking for people to contribute pictures of themselves in a pose and clothing of their choice. Once she receives the picture, she works to bring out the beauty in each body.

“The goal is to normalize real bodies and to make people feel included and familiar,” Combs said. “I don’t want to paint skin color, because I don’t want to inadvertently leave anyone out. Bodies are all so different, but they’re all the same, too.”

Combs struggles with dysthymia, or tennis elbow, which sometimes makes it hard for her to work. Motivation is hard to come by in those cases, causing her to get “dark and heady” (sound familiar, #Endobabes?).

“I never really felt like I was doing what I was supposed to (do) until I started my body positive artwork,” she said. “Some of the messages I’ve gotten from people have brought me to tears. This is actually helping people and while I do a lot of fun illustration and stuff, too, this is what fulfills me the most.”

Managing Editor

Emily Thorpe is a writer and editor out of Minneapolis. She started exhibiting signs of endometriosis at 16 but wasn’t formally diagnosed until 30, when she had her first excision surgery. That lonely and horrifying experience has not only informed Emily’s view of the world around her, but is also the reason she speaks out about chronic conditions as whole: we can only fix things for future generations with awareness and research that is inclusive and science based. She hopes to someday live in a world where endometriosis is not only recognized as more than “women’s trouble,” but where a cause and cure for the disease is found.
Emily lives with her husband, cat, and dog, believes in human rights for all, and that a night with live music with those you love can fix almost anything.