Veerle Thielemans, Curator, Museé d'Art Américain: "Michele Burgess draws vulnerable bodies. Their awkward and introverted poses deliberately run counter to the traditional representation of the human body, which is ruled by a canonical ideal of Beauty. In Swimming Lessons, she presents us with the body of a clumsy child who calls into question the realism of the supreme bathers represented by the American painter Thomas Eakins at the end of the nineteenth century."