Sensuality interests me! I enjoy touching and being touched. I need a full lipped French kiss, the warmth of a body, the curves, the feeling of skin, and to quote one of my favourite films ‘The Rocky Horror Show’ “a little bit of massage and steam”.
It is part of me, part of art and part of my work.
I think that artists put their sensuality on display. I am sure many are unaware of doing so but it is unavoidable. It comes through the artists’ preferences and the choices which are sometimes not conscious decisions. Things like the materials and colours they choose to work in, textures they make, the way they use line and so on. It is something that is difficult to pin down but it is, when the artist is not trying too hard, easily spotted.
A work I often think about is ‘Plum Cream’ by Penny Siopis, now in the Tatham Art Gallery in Pietermaritzburg. It is a painting of a cake but it is a cake that feels to me to have the ingredients of labia and pudenda rather than flour and eggs. Perhaps it should have been banned as obscene but I love it. I much prefer this to her history paintings which I find are over intellectualised and pander to the academics. ‘Plum Cream’ has that sensual content, the real soul of the woman, and that is something to get excited about.
At university I used to take an intense interest in the works put on the wall for the monthly critiques. Not only because I could learn something about the composition of works but also because I could learn about the people who made them. Coincidently, they were mostly women. I like to think it was a balanced life as my social education was then at least as good as my academic efforts.
The making sculpture is often a sensual activity. Perhaps this is more obvious in modelling wet clay than carving dry rock. It is felt, fingered, and caressed into shape by the artists’ hands. Painting, by contrast, is generally prodded onto canvas with some hairs on the end of a stick and viewed from a distance. Admirers of sculpture often feel the work and it is a medium more easily appreciated by blind people.
Of course my own sensuality or frigidity is out there for all to see. I try and embrace it as I think of it as worthwhile content. Each of new works In a Tangle, and Reef Ranger (sold) display that part of me. ‘In a Tangle’ has the warmth of the wood, the curvilinear lines, and the intimate subject. ‘Reef Ranger’ is a satisfying subject that I have tackled several times. Because of its amorphous form an octopus can be “bent” to take almost any shape and becomes a vehicle for expression of a sensual self. I am not alone in my choice of this subject and am aware of Hokusai’s erotic octopus which some may read as lewd. However, for me, it so explicitly expresses what many have felt; the desire to consume your lovers’ body.
Naturally I would like to think I am deeply sensual. It is the kind of accolade that would suit my artists’ identity and add to my sense of being a good lover. However, as I am not in the habit of fondling myself, I am in a poor position to judge. Perhaps it would be best to ask my wife. Then again don’t, as you might feel obliged to burst my bubble.
I think, as a New Years’ resolution, I will heed those lines from my favourite film “give yourself over to absolute pleasure”. That for me will be falling in love with and getting steamy with my bits of wood and bone.
Regards
Carl
