Her nonconventional looks at beauty expands the traditional nude form into a way to comment on the body, gender politics, sexuality, and even self-realization. Her works often "depict distorted, fleshy, and disquieting female bodies" to provoke interest, confusion, questions, and excitement. Saville’s luscious yet grotesque treatment of painted bodies have elicited comparisons to Lucian Freud. "I paint flesh because I'm human", she has said. "If you work in oil, as I do, it comes naturally. Flesh is just the most beautiful thing to paint." "A confrontation with the dynamics of exposure ... her exaggerated nudes point up, with an agonizing frankness, the disparity between the way women are perceived and the way that they feel about their bodies" (Suzie Mackenzie). She plays upon the "ambiguity of embodiment" and what it means to be "feminine" or "beautiful" through the use of the distortion and "disgust". This "aesthetic of disgust" pushed people to the uncomfortable and forced many into the shoes of countless women in the Western world, giving some the autonomy to decide their own standard of beauty beyond society. The primary subject of all of Saville’s early works is the artist herself, and indeed throughout her "oeuvre" she has almost exclusively painted female subjects. Scholars like Loren Erdrich argue there is a direct link between the physical body, identity, and the self presented within Saville's subjects.