There are a dozen figures in the 13-foot grid of self-portraits, all of them painted in black and white acrylic on pink paper, all of them staring directly at their viewers. "They're kind of ominous, actually," says their subject and creator, Rebecca Campbell, "and funny at the same time."

The first one painted she calls Becky-Anne, her "country mouse" face. This is Rebecca as she imagines colleagues may receive her on first meeting, noting her Salt Lake City roots. It is this sort of first impression that can determine "who you are and what your weight in the conversation is," she says. After Becky-Anne, came the portrait she calls Jack, a "butch" character arriving as a reaction to Becky-Anne's vulnerability. The final portrait Eve "has a black eye and she's wearing this sexy thing."

The collection, displayed in Rebecca's Culver City studio, is an implicit rejoinder to any premature conclusions about her innocence or lack of sophistication. And, in some ways, much of her art could be characterized as an investigation of stereotypes or rebellion against fixed ideas.

The Mormon Church and the art world are two "religions" that have stimulated Rebecca's rebellion. Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, she was the last of seven children in a family headed by a Mormon bishop. Rebecca left those beliefs behind when she left Salt Lake City, to study at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, the museum school in Portland, Oregon.

"I had this naive vision of the art world as a place where artists would encourage one another to question and share ideas," she says. Instead, she learned that "social standing has a lot to do with recognition and success, and that was surprising to me." In an attempt to replace the security her religious convictions had brought her she adopted the trappings of feminism: From baggy clothes to pro-choice advocacy to paintings about relevant themes, "I really carried the torch."

Then, intrigued by the strong reaction she had to titillating depictions of women, she started frequenting strip clubs. "Sometimes I would go and be angry. I would look at the men in the audience and be disgusted," she says. "Other times I would have a wonderful time, and I would be excited at the permissive nature of that world the dancers lived in."

Returning to Salt Lake City after graduation, Rebecca began to paint closely cropped, graphic sexual images. These were displayed in "the back room" of an installation called "Pink" at a Salt Lake City gallery. The show also included three large-scale allegorical portraits of women; some dancer friends performed in the anonymity of backlighting. "I thought there would be some sort of hubbub" about the show, she says. "What I forgot is that the people who would be offended never go to art galleries."

Ready to leave Salt Lake City again, Rebecca arrived at UCLA last fall, feeling lonesome and out of step, and somewhat at odds with what she saw as the prevailing taste in the art world, a world "skeptical of painting" and bored with the autobiographical. Feeling "a little claustrophobic," she found work teaching art to children at an elementary school in South Central Los Angeles. The work is not only "really fulfilling," it's good preparation for Rebecca's long-time goal: founding her own art school, first for children probably, but eventually a college-level program. Her sense is that the time is ripe for a rural art school, with urban sophistication.

Although she abandoned his church, Rebecca retains her father's belief in "being simple and honest about who you are and what you think," a characteristic that she says is "not always well-received." She appreciates the diversity of ideas represented by Art Department faculty, "I can't tell you how much I love to be in the studio," she says. "For me, there is a sort of physical, visceral satisfaction in making objects" even if "objects are not part of a critical agenda."

Published in Winter 2000, Graduate Quarterly