Embracing My Inner Soft Pornographer

Thanks Abby Kent for this great photoshopping. It was even more hilarious in its original context. I had just posted images of my "Mounts" paintings on a message board, along with some thoughts about them, where I ignored mentioning anything about the blatant sexual innuendo. This particular group of folks were not having it; I was called out.

I truly think of this as a subtext, a quietly humorous aside. When one paints nudes every day for a few months, very quickly the model's physical nudity loses its domination of the experience. Over the past several years, I stopped worrying about having suggestive shapes and meanings in my work. I became less self-conscious about it, and eventually came to encourage it in a playful way. This seems integral to my imagery and to my conceptual considerations. I have always maintained a mental boundary; I have always held it away in its "interesting and funny subtext" role.

Well, I'm calling myself out now. I may have been fooling myself about the impartial nature of my tourettesian tendencies.

I'm finally connecting with these recent paintings. They had been very focused on formal decisions, especially in dealing with awkward and contrarian aesthetic choices. They are beginning to lurch more into an area of personal expression, and it's because I'm letting the imagery be truly sensual, rather than jokey sensual, at least in my own perceptions.

I think I need to give the subtextual suggestions a promotion. I think they may be more real and more important than I admit to myself. So, here's to horns and fallopian imagery!

*1-12-10 Correction made, Abby Kent invented Soft Porn Ben and Jerry's, not Pat Strong.