Yesterday I got to fulfill one of my long-time goals. I got to not only meet Nancy Peach, erotic artist and painter of rope scenes, but “pose” for her. The hope was that Minx Grrl and I would be able to have a scene hot enough to inspire her to create one of her large 8′x8′ canvases, like the ones of Lochai & Madison Young or of James Mogul and Madison that are currently hanging in Wicked Grounds.
Now keep in mind, I love art so much, I married an artist. I actually enjoyed art history. I know enough painters to know how much work and passion and effort goes into these things, even the ones that are supposedly “quick” (like Kandinsky. Mmmm…Kandinsky). So the idea that some of my performance work – the rope, the way I structure and move a scene, etc – would be worthy of that kind of effort? That blows my mind. In a very good way.
There’s something very visceral about a painting. Ask Lochai how he felt when he saw his image, writ huge upon the wall. How humbling it felt for him. Paintings also have a different kind of a life than a photograph. Without getting all Art-In-The-Age-of-Mechanical-Reproduction on you, a painting is unique – a photograph can be reproduced. This does not make one more valid than the other, or better, just different. I’m equally excited about the photoshoot I’m going to do with Mollena and Michele Serchuk tomorrow – that one wasn’t even a life goal, it was something I never dreamed of (Serchuk’s work was some of the first fetish photography I ever saw and appreciated, and I’m in FanBoy Awe of working with her tomorrow. But don’t tell.).
Painting has some history behind that goes back much further than photography. Photography is the beauty that the photographer is able to see and capture; painting is beauty that the painter is able to see and recreate. There is also a different kind of feeling of history around pigments and canvas, and that’s what gets me.
Nancy took several hundred reference images during the scene to work from, and after sharing several on her site, she emailed us both to try and figure out which would be the best one to make into a large 8×8 piece.
Here are the four:
I love the first one, in terms of the line of her body, the way it shows the ropes, and the grip of my hands. At the same time, I’m a fairly disembodied presence here – and before you get all “Get over yourself, Gray!” on me, remember the purpose of this piece of art: it is to capture the feeling of the scene, not just the pretty lady.
The second two do a good job of capturing that feeling – the hot & sweaty of it, and the dynamic between her delight of having me “manhandle” her body (her words) and the motion of the scene (side note: there is a Rope Educator part of me that is delighted that we didn’t do any suspension at all. Floorwork is fucking hot, dammit).
The last image has great line, hot flesh, nice ink, ropes, and shows both of us…as I eat her out. Yes, that’s right, we did some oral play as well (if you click on the link to Nancy’s site, you’ll see my cock peeking out from under my AltKilt).
And that’s where I suddenly paused. Gray, said a little voice inside my head, you are about to be immortalized in acrylic and canvas larger-than-life. Do you want it to be an image of you eating pussy?
Some of you out there will be snickering. Some will be going “No way! You should be all domly and rope toppy!” Some will be “Dude, it’s fine, we just wish there was less of your face showing, so we could substitute our own faces in our imagination.”
All but the last one are actually sex-negative voices. I love eating pussy. In fact, on the occasion that new lovers will say “Um, that’s fine, you can eat me out, but I usually don’t cum that way” my response is “Honey, that’s fine, cuz it’s not for you – it’s all about me.” So as an activist for a sex-positive world, as someone who advocates “Never be ashamed of anything you do,” I had a responsibility to get past those cultural knee-jerk sex-negative reactions and go for the beauty.
Brad Warner, in his recent book Sex, Sin, and Zen, quotes his teacher:
“…on the basis of Buddhism, there seems to exist a kind of criterion that what is moral is always beautiful, and what is beautiful is usually moral.”
While I don’t agree with everything I’ve read in that book so far (he totally misunderstands and misrepresents polyamory) I like that idea. Looking at that picture, there is so much beauty there – the arch of her back, the line of the body, her ink, my ink, the fact that neither of us, in that moment, were thinking about cameras or paintings. That was a moment where we were able to touch the ineffable.
What better way to be represented in the ancient medium of painting?
I wrote Nancy and told her: “Go with the Pussy.” I don’t know if she will – she’s got the ultimate decision, because the painting is hers. But I have to thank her for this particular growth opportunity, to be faced with a sex-positivity challenge and feel that I was able to meet it, and move beyond it, in accordance with my own moral compass.
