Consider a new way of seeing yourself in this episode of Exploring the Mystical Side of Life as body positivity artist Joseph Brady joins us for an inspiring conversation on how shifting our perspective of our own bodies can lead to unexpected healing, confidence, and self-acceptance.

Joseph Brady brings to life the intimate journeys of his subjects through art, helping them transform their relationship with the very parts of themselves they once kept hidden. Discover how creative expression can dissolve old self-judgments and reframe personal stories of scars, imperfections, and lived experience into sources of pride and strength.

 

 

Here are 3 enlightening takeaways from this episode:

🔹 See Yourself with New Eyes: Experience the power of viewing yourself through an artist’s compassionate lens—one that highlights the beauty in every human story and encourages releasing harsh self-critique.

🔹 Art as a Healing Journey: Learn how the process of being seen, celebrated, and painted—especially those areas we are most critical of—can open the heart, build self-trust, and catalyze emotional healing.

🔹 Go Beyond the Mirror: Understand why the mirror may not be your best friend and how an alternative perspective can reveal a truer, kinder reflection, helping you appreciate the uniqueness and resilience of your own body.

Let Joseph’s approach to body positivity inspire you to embrace your journey, celebrate your scars as “bragging rights,” and show up in the world a little more open-hearted.

Listen now to be uplifted, and remember: how you see yourself shapes not just your choices but the very essence of your life.

 

Transcript:

Linda Lang:
We are exploring something we all live in, our bodies and how the way we see them shapes our confidence, our choices, and even our sense of self.

Announcer:
Welcome to Exploring the Mystical side of Life with your host Linda Lang.

Linda Lang:
Hi Linda Lang here from ThoughtChange.com. We are Exploring the Mystical Side of Life once again this week. If you enjoy our conversation conversations, remember to subscribe Share with a friend something different today on the podcast, we have body positivity artist Joseph Brady here. Welcome Joseph.

Joseph Brady:
Happy to be here.

Linda Lang:
Joseph creates art that helps people see their bodies in a new, more loving way, more accepting way. So, well, let’s dive in to how changing our perception of our bodies can actually transform our lives. Joseph, whatever inspired you to start creating body positivity art?

Joseph Brady:
I have always been an artist and I’ve always liked drawing what I see. I have been doing faces and figures for years, and then one time I started drawing a friend of mine who had a very severely scarred belly from giving birth at the age of 19. At 26, I painted her. For about seven years, she kept her belly covered; she wouldn’t swim, she wouldn’t date, she wouldn’t wear age appropriate clothing. Just a lot of things because she was so ashamed of these scars that she had. When I painted her belly, two things happened.

One is she took the image and she showed her mother, which she never told her mother anything that she was doing. Second thing she did is she turned that painting into a Mother’s Day card because she saw it as being pride, the badge of being a mother and the sacrifices and the story it takes. And she realized that these scars are important. There’s scars about her son, scars about her life, and other mothers should appreciate it. Since then she started dating; she’s been remarried. It changed her life. I took that example and looked for other examples, and it turned into a passion.

Linda Lang:
Beautiful story, Joseph, and what a testament to the shift your art can help people make in their own mind. How do you think the artwork actually helps to shift people and their own perception of their bodies?

Joseph Brady:
I think it helps because the end result is more than just a piece of art. The result is an entire experience. First of all, there’s admitting that there is self-criticism about some part of the body. Scars generate a lot of them, weight creates a lot of. A lot of these are just created because they don’t match an image that they think society tells them should have. Whatever. Admitting it to me when I’m showing other examples that have gone through just starts this whole process and they’re willing to talk about It. And suddenly I had,

I’ve been in public places where someone opens up her shirt, shows me what’s going on with her belly. Something not even considered in any other situation, which invokes a great deal of trust, and it honors me that they do that. The process continues on to discussing that there would be a painting, what the painting would include, how the painting’s going to be done. I want to be sure that the person I’m painting can watch what’s going on. I set up a camera and put it right on the page. If I’m doing someplace live, like in my studio, or sometimes it’s in kind of a booth, I put it on a monitor, so as a painting, the person can watch it just surface and develop.

And then the painting is presented, and I let the reaction happen. And finally the painting’s taken home. And most often they’re framed and hung. That’s the entire experience that makes this a helpful process. The other part of that is what I choose to paint. I’d like to choose perspectives that are not reflected in a mirror. So someone sees themselves as the world, someone else would see themselves. But not from the same point of view a mirror would have, which I think also helps.

Linda Lang:
I think that’s a huge part of it, actually. Because as we look at the world, when we can shift whatever our perception is, whether we see it from a different angle or from above, we always shift our perspective. We always interpret it a little bit different. So I think that’s a really powerful way to help people shift. Helping them to see things they didn’t see or see it in a different light.

Joseph Brady:
And my experience has been that it’s a true statement. So I can share with yo, one time I did not do that. Oonly once. And I was very disappointed by the reaction. And I realized it’s because I didn’t choose an alternative perspective, and so I won’t do that again.

Linda Lang:
Now, you mentioned the word trust. And how imperative it is for your subject to have that trust because you’re dealing with their intimate scars and sometimes their intimate body parts, right?

Joseph Brady:
Yes.

Linda Lang:
So that level of trust is so important. How are you able to communicate that level of trust in such a short time?

Joseph Brady:
I think I’d have to answer that question, if I knew, I would probably blow it. I’m just fortunate that way. My demeanor, my pure objectivity about art, and how I can discuss it has been very helpful. And I’d like to be able to say this is my formula; I don’t have one. And actually I’m kind of glad I don’t have one because I said if I knew what it was, I’d probably practice it and probably blow it. I don’t have a good solid answer for that.

Linda Lang:
Well, I could probably give you some insight. And I’m going to say it’s not a system you have, but it’s just in your nature not to be judgmental, to be allowing and accepting and to, as an artists’ eye, to be looking for beauty everywhere. I think that’s your secret.

Joseph Brady:
Thank you.

Linda Lang:
So what kind of challenges have you faced trying to promote this type of body positivity through your art?

Joseph Brady:
I think you’re touching the largest challenge that is the promotion itself. A lot of people think that a photograph is what I like to work from. And if they give me a photograph I can work with it and that’s all I need. It’s a sincerity, but it’s also extremely naive and not understanding the mind of an artist. As an artist, I want to paint live. I want to be able to see the nuances. I don’t want a photograph to give me the false perspectives, the false proportions that can occur.

As a photograph being a complete different kind of art, the photographers look at the entire image from corner to corner, in the center. Every piece of that image is worked on so that the photo has impact. And it’s a complete different language than what we have as a brush and paint. When I’m given a photograph, the expectations are I replicate that photo. And if I don’t replicate the photo, it could lead to disappointment.

Number one is I need to clarify that this is an experience of posing and watching a surface and interacting while it’s happening. Because as I said earlier, it isn’t just finished art piece which is a product. It’s the entire experience that needs to take place. So that piece of promotion is something I’m working on communicating stronger.

The second is often I’m in places that are family-friendly and this is not a Disney-style booth. It’s not rated G. And I have been times asked to cover up. I’ve asked time to take things down, in which case I switch gears and I go to my family-friendly portraiture, which is more like caricatures. And I’ve done a lot of those, I’m happy to do them, but it’s not the body positivity. I need to switch gears and that happens.

The third thing is, is that I risk judgments, I risk losing relationships, I risk losing friendships over this kind of work that I do. And that is something I’ve come to grips with because I realized that if I’m going to lose a friendship or relationship over something like this, they’ve never really been friends along the way. Because I am being who I am, I’m exposing it. And if it’s controversial, that’s controversial.

Linda Lang:
Why do you think there is such a pushback on the human body? Like you’re an artist drawing the human body; it’s been painted and sculpted for centuries. And here it is also taking on a quality of healing the judgmental aspects of your subject. And yet, there’s so many people that just can’t allow that to be. I find that very bizarre.

Joseph Brady:
It is bizarre. I’ve lived in Latin America where nudity is a lot more open and body parts are often discussed in public without any issue whatsoever. On the flip side, South America is also very religious and so there’s also a lot of taboo speak about it. I saw both in South America, United States. I see the same thing. In fact, I’m seeing kind of the puritanism, which we have innate in our system, kind of surfacing, coming up quite a bit. Especially in areas where there seems to be a strong influence on religious practices. Those sort of influences do put a shield on what I do.

Yet nevertheless, they will still appreciate art, as you said, and they can go into library, the art books pull out… like when they see famous artists making, showing some nudes that used to be done a long time ago, “well, that’s art.” But for themselves to be portrayed that way takes a very special mindset.

Linda Lang:
Do you think it could be indicative of their own self-judgments of their own body or the human body, just in general?

Joseph Brady:
I think it’s more complex than just one particular source. I think you touched on one which is they’re looking at their own bodies and they feel like it’s not worthy of exhibition, or they never considered it before. And so they need to break through that capability. I think you touched on something actually, which is very helpful for me because that is a favorite discussion I have with someone when they start realizing that they could possibly be a very good model. They’ve never considered that before, and often that has turned around to being quite an honor. And they’re really happy to model. I say things like, “I’ve never modeled like this before. I didn’t know I could.”

The other problem, which I’d mentioned before, is I just think there could be a very strong religious component in society that suddenly it shuts it off. And there’s a component too which can come into it that maybe someone might be willing to, but family member… they’re afraid of a family member asking, “What’s going on? Why are you doing this?” It’s just get something else. If I know which one of the, which one of those is the objection, I can probably talk about it but I need to have a good discussion prior. Of course, I need to be able to ask the questions and read the body language. Certain things I just can’t push.

Linda Lang:
So why do you think it’s so healing for people to have the experience of having their body part, whatever part it is, the part that they judge the most. And like you said, sometimes that can be scars through trauma, or it could be weight, or it could just be their body. Right? So why do you think it’s so healing to have it drawn?

Joseph Brady:
I think what I have been seeing is that the discussions I have prior to being drawn to help kind of shatter some of the preconception. This is not a photograph. You’re not going to see yourself as you would in a photograph. I am not using the same perspective as the mirror. And I talked about how the mirror is actually a big mis-informant about how you might look like. All right, choose a point of view. A lot of times I like to get low and paint, and paint the image up high. For the reason on an image, if the person is perceived from a point of view, from lower, it communicates a little bit of power and control. And a lot of times who I’m painting will recognize the shapes.

First they’ll see very nice shapes, a very nice piece of art. Very nice, rendered nicely, with nice, beautiful shapes. And then it dawns, “Oh, that’s me. I recognize those shapes and changes.” A whole different point of view of something to look at.

Joseph Brady:
I’ve had times when people cry, when they’ve gotten it.

Linda Lang:
Do you have any other miracle stories that you could share with us, from your art?

Joseph Brady:
Let me show you this one. This woman, at 20 years old, nearly died from intestinal problems, exactly what they were, she didn’t identify what they were. She couldn’t afford going to the doctor. The doctor would do things for free, but very minimal, unless she was near death… Well, near death. She got the surgeries done that she needed, and got done. She’s had several surgeries. She’s had two C-sections, and her stomach is just all… You saw what her chest is all about. She wanted this painting to be a statement to her doctor that said, “I survived.” And she used very graphic language. She wanted to tell her doctors; that’s what she wanted this painting to be.

Since this painting’s been done, she’s been much more open to talking to people about the scars and working with other doctors, talking to other people about C-sections and what it means. And she was so happy to know somebody else understood where she’s coming from. In fact, she took a whole day off of work to go to my studio to have this painting, and we’re talking about additional paintings after this.

Linda Lang:
What strikes me about that story is it really is her intimate life journey that you’ve captured now. It doesn’t have to be in person, correct?

Joseph Brady:
Correct. I can do cam-to-cam. My camera, instead of being on my face, is going to be pointing on the painting in front of me. You overhear my voice, but you watch my hands work. And you’ll see on this, on this board, a board like this, that’s surfacing direct on the, on the page. And when it’s finished, you’ll see me stick it into a mylar envelope and mail it the very same day.

Linda Lang:
Would you like to do a little bit of drawing so that people get a feel?

Joseph Brady:
Well, I’m certainly prepared to do that. Let me get my tools out.

Linda Lang:
When we look at what is considered beautiful, it’s a pretty narrow perimeter, but it isn’t always the body. Sometimes it’s the face, you know, and it can even not be that, but it could be distorted in a person’s mind. Right? It’s the way they see their body or their face. Do you work on faces as well, or just bodies?

Joseph Brady:
Oh, I do a lot of faces, a lot of… Let me show an example here. This is a book that I, that I bring with me every time I set up someplace, of examples. Example of a face.

Linda Lang:
She’s gorgeous.

Joseph Brady:
Oh, she is gorgeous. Oh, yeah, yeah. So I do faces, and I will… I won’t exaggerate what I see, but I will certainly render it in a very kind way.

Linda Lang:
Yes, we need more kindness these days. I agree. All right, do you want to give us a little example of what your work is like?

Joseph Brady:
What I’ll do is, I’ll do a little kind of a little sketch. As you can see, what I’m doing here, I’m just giving a quick example of what I know about the anatomy of an eye. I’m going to do real quickly. And what the process is about. What I’ll do here is a little demonstration of the watercolor and why I choose the medium that I do. The thing about watercolors, when you let it dry, things happen. And the eyes…

Let’s give this person brownish eyes. And eyes tend to have lots of layer of color. Start with lots to the upper layer, I’ll play the background bit. You start seeing how the form is taken. It starts a few lines, and by adding the colors the right places, I’m starting to get form.

Linda Lang:
Yeah.

Joseph Brady:
So now I have to let this dry a little bit so I can do the next step. However, I can do some of that. I’ll go back to very carefully position white places on the, on the face. I kind of put some in to start with already, but there’s going to be more I want. I used a lot of water and that now actually brown color. By layering the pencil in on top of the, on the paint, I get some of that transparency and depth that happens especially in places like the eyes. So I’m here putting some brown in. I’m going to say brown, brown hair in general. And let this eye dry before I can do some other things to it.

Linda Lang:
It’s absolutely fascinating to watch you. And I could certainly see how a model, someone who is modeling for you, would find it fascinating and almost maybe detach a little bit because it is really like a work of art unfolding.

Joseph Brady:
Thank you. I find it kind of helps answer the question that you gave earlier about the process and what is it that was helpful in healing. So here you get an idea of how it’s going. What I’d like to do is just kind of let this dry and come back into it.

Linda Lang:
Really fascinating to watch you, Joseph, in the process, and to see what looked mostly like a doodle just to be transformed and developed into a work of art.

Joseph Brady:
I do like drawing as being a performing art. I started doing that when I was 14 years old, drawing quick, goofy caricatures at carnivals, at schools and the community I lived in.

Linda Lang:
What do you see as the future of body positivity in art? How can that evolve more?

Joseph Brady:
I know that I’m pioneering in it. I accept the role of being a pioneer. I never really consider myself being a leader, but I am leading something. Other artists I’ve talked to are considering getting into it as well. But I have a lot of work to do in breaking the ground, and realizing it can be done, how to advertise it, how to. How people find me.

Linda Lang:
To me, it’s almost like you’re painting their intimate journey of life. In the body, the body is the expression of it, but it’s the journey I feel like you’re capturing in your artwork. And so the painting you did for me of my leg with my scar, the fact that it didn’t have any emotional charge or angst, anger, fear, any kind of anything attached to it, I thought was a beautiful testament of the work I’ve done to release the baggage. Right? You can have a painting done because you have a lot of baggage around a scar or an experience or a part of your body. Or it can also be a testament to the work you’ve already done.

Joseph Brady:
Really good point. Really good point. I’m flashing on what tends to be the process of setting up a painting. This is exactly what happened with you too. We talked to each other a little bit about it, there’s a little bit of interest, and then I have an opportunity to show some examples. And after showing about three or four of them, the person who ends up getting painted starts talking about life experiences, usually as scars or could be not feeling real, 100% comfortable about the backs of the legs and the knees.

In your case, you were really quite excited to tell me about the scar. You got up with enthusiasm, put the camera on the back of your leg, and you gave me the whole story of what it was. And you were very patient while I painted. And I think that you’re touching on something very important in that you have dealt with it, and you want to demonstrate in another level, what you’ve come to terms on. I think that’s a really powerful piece of information. Thank you.

Linda Lang:
It’s maybe an ability to be proud that you had that journey. You came through that journey, you learned through that journey, and it’s part of who you are now.

Joseph Brady:
I came up with the phrase, “scars are bragging rights.”

Linda Lang:
So true. Now, what advice would you give to someone who is struggling with body image?

Joseph Brady:
There are two pieces that I frequently talk about. One is if shyness is a big part of resistance to do something like this. The only thing I can say is that if I try to talk someone out of shyness, will only make it worse. And I can also say that if someone says that “I’m too shy for that,” every time you say something like that, you make it worse for yourself. Shyness is really not your friend. It really doesn’t protect you from anything. If you find yourself shy, reconsider why the shyness? Meet that head on. And I think I make that easy for some.

Now, the second thing that I end up talking about a lot is that sometimes people don’t even realize they could talk about the body in a way that “I’m not comfortable with this…” I had a discussion with someone who I was showing the pieces to just start saying, “Yeah, so I’ve had some surgery. I really don’t like the scars. I really just don’t like them.” The more she talked about it, the more she realized that something like this would be helpful for her. So the second advice is feel free to speak about what it is that is bothering you. Let it out, own it, and then you go through the process like what you’ve gone through. I don’t… I’m not charged anymore about what I survived.

Linda Lang:
Exactly what kind of questions do people bring to you when they’re considering having a portrait done?

Joseph Brady:
One question is that can someone else be there at the same time? Which of course, when I’m in my studio, I encourage people to bring someone along, not only for the companionship, but also just to feel safer. A lot of times they’ll do that and I’d like that. I like to have other people in the room, especially something that is actually participating just by discussing. A lot of times people are concerned about their own safety in two veins. One is this is like a treatment. So in the United States, we have HIPAA privacy disclosure. And there’s certain things I go through a lot of times. I don’t want to know the patient.

If I’m collaborating with the therapist, I don’t want to know the patient’s name. I often won’t paint the face for a reason, so I don’t need to see the face. I assign whatever privacy disclosure is required. I make sure that I’m alone in my room. I, I follow through a lot of the protocols of, of requesting permission for every little thing that, that I do. Especially if it’s someone live in my studio. I would say, “I need to adjust the light, I need to get closer to adjust the light. Can I do that?” So I ask for all those little permissions along the way just to keep the trust going.

When in my home studio, I make sure the subject knows that there are three exits. They can pick up and leave immediately, can leave anytime they want. There are three exits they can choose from. I point them out to it and I won’t try to stop them. These are things that are common questions that are coming through. Another is how long does it take? Usually it takes 45 minutes.

Linda Lang:
You said something really interesting earlier on in our conversation about how distorted mirrors can be for our own self-perception. Could you explain that a little bit?

Joseph Brady:
Yeah. The mirror is a big mis-informant and really shouldn’t be trusted in so many different ways. Let me explain why. First of all, it’s a piece of glass with paint on it. Being a piece of glass alone will take light and refract it. It’ll bend it either to make it expand what you see or contract what you see. Either way, it is not exactly your proportions that you’re looking at. Fibonacci, mathematician and an artist centuries ago, explained the golden proportions and a lot of things in nature follow specific.

We see it in the conch shell. We see it in the fern leaf. Follow these proportions. Well, the human face has those too. When you are contracting or expanding, you just lost a sense of those proportions. Even if it just a fraction of a millimeter off, it is enough for our perception to not like what we see. And that’s the only image we have of ourselves is what we see in that mirror. To take that further, when we look at the mirror, we see ourselves only at the eye level, not down. We don’t see ourselves where other people do. Might be from below, might be from behind, might be from the side.

We don’t see it that way. So this is the only thing we see from those perspectives. So one thing that I like to do when I get in my paintings and that is that when I get in a low position, painting high, not only does it set the image nicely in the rectangle for artistic reasons, but also when it’s finished, it’s showing you a point of view that you’ve not seen of yourself. When I painted you, I painted the back of your knee. You don’t see that right now, so you get a chance to see something brand new and different. The third thing is when you see yourself in the mirror, often it’s first thing in the morning. And you just get up and you’re not in the best mood, maybe your glasses might not be on, but you see your non-peak face, so you say, your non-optimum face. That can set a really bad mood for the day.

You might see a blemish that you had, maybe a small little scar that you got as a kid. And you may as well think it’s a crator on the moon when most people don’t even see it. Or if they do see it as character; this is its point of interest. Another thing is that we, and this happens once you get to my age… you do it weekly… you look at yourself in the mirror, you go, “I didn’t used to look like that, I used to look different.” All these things just cause the mirror to not be your friend. But if you want to double check on your dress, you want to make sure your hair is good, perfect. Believe it or not, it’s not a good reference.

Linda Lang:
I also find it so interesting because you can look at yourself in different mirrors and you look different. You physically look different. It’s like somehow I look different in my bathroom mirror than in the mirror downstairs by the foyer. And some of that could be lighting, but I bet you some of that is as you were talking, the thickness of the glass and how much distortion there is.

Joseph Brady:
You go to the fun house, they’ve got mirrors perfectly distorted to make you look tall, skinny, alien, whatever.

Linda Lang:
And yet so often that’s what we base our self-judgments on. Right?

Joseph Brady:
Yeah.

Linda Lang:
I think it’s fascinating actually, Joseph, because maybe you put a little, a little mark down on it. I thought, ooh, you know, it looked like a mistake. And then it gets blended in and like, no, that’s not a mistake. It’s perfect. Right? It’s kind of like how we look at ourselves and we think, oh, you know, this is a mistake. It didn’t look like this. But in the grand scheme of things, it’s perfect.

Joseph Brady:
Just a few strokes, a few lines of black. There are parts of the body that truly are black, like eyelashes. And when I need to get just a little bit of refinement other than that, I don’t like to paint without black. And then I let this dry and I send, send it off in the mail.

Linda Lang:
Well, can you lift it up and give us an upright view?

Joseph Brady:
Yes.

Linda Lang:
Wow, that’s fascinating. So much depth in it.

Joseph Brady:
And as you’re watching it dry, because I put on layers of watercolor again, you’re starting to see that eye now, starting to show life. When it’s wet, at first, it all looks the one dark color, but as it dries, you see the layer of color, and this is what you’ll see happen while painting live.

Linda Lang:
Such interesting work that you do. Joseph, I first of all love your artwork. And the fact that it can help people change their minds about themselves is amazing to me. I love that idea. Now, if people want to know more or want to have a look at some of your images, where can we send them?

Joseph Brady:
I have a gallery site called daily paintworks. Dailypaintworks.com, search on Joseph Brady, and up will come my gallery.

Linda Lang:
Perfect. Perfect. Thank you so much for being my guest today.

Joseph Brady:
Well, it’s been my pleasure. I’ve loved every second of it.

Linda Lang:
And for showing us your beautiful face that you’ve created for us.

Joseph Brady:
I find it fascinating to paint eyes, watch them just come to life.

Linda Lang:
The windows of the soul. I hope our conversation inspires everyone listening to look at their own bodies with a little more kindness, curiosity, and appreciation. Remember how we see ourselves, shapes how we show up in the world. Come visit me at ThoughtChange.com. Bye for now.