This is in the Guggenheim because it is a serious artistic question about the female vulva. I’ve taken up oil painting, with a real passion, in the last few years, and I’ve recently begun painting a series, very fresh and exciting to me, of beautiful subjects (cherry trees in blossom, my newborn daughter asleep, etc.) on material that is chosen for its unaesthetic qualities: (i.e., old clothing, usually torn, ripped, stained, worn-out, etc.). The idea is to have the viewer considering his or her emotional response that goes one way for the subject and the other way for the material, and to reconcile these contradictory emotions. It’s challenging because I need to be very adept to render the subjects as beautifully as I require, and I’m not quite that skilled technically, but rapidly improving. (I had a lot of training as a boy in oil painting—I did some canvases before I was a teenager that amaze me to this day for their detailed rendering of complex subjects, flowers, landscapes, etc.—but I gave it up for a long time.) Anyway, the last few weeks, I’ve been painting female nudes on old distressed pairs of jeans, specifically the body parts that correspond to the section of the pants they’re painted on, which meant at first a lot of buttocks (the buttock area of the pants stretches out nice and flat) and lately the front torso section, which stretches out almost as well. So lately, I’ve been painting a series of female nudes from the upper thigh to the navel, roughly, back and front, and I’ve been very pleased with the results.
My question has to do with models for these (I promise) non-pornographic works of art. I’ve mostly been working from photos (of ex-girlfriends, for example, who sent me nude photos when we were courting) or from photos downloaded from the web, which aren’t even necessarily nudes but thong-bikini shots that are very easy to eliminate the bikini from. I’ve used the same five or six photos that meet my needs (lighting, composition, angle, etc.) but lately I’ve been so pleased with these paintings that I’m thinking I need some fresh photos and would rather take some myself than hunt for ones that are suitable. (You’d be surprised at how rare a full-frontal quality photo of a vulva is available.) Mostly I prefer photos to live models because the light changes over the course of a modeling session and getting the highlights right is the hardest part of painting for me, but in any event, I find it puzzling how I can induce women to model for me.
I’m currently between girlfriends (and happily so—I’d been in a series of claustrophobic relationships the past few years) and some female friends of mine, co-workers, neighbors, etc. have expressed an interest in seeing these paintings. (I’ve got all of the canvases I’ve completed on my hard drive, which I’ll show anyone who asks how my painting is coming along—since I showed them my more benign paintings in the years that I was doing them, these women understand the edgier nudes in the larger context of my painting career. I’ve also shown the paintings to my male friends and co-workers, who have been equally enthusiastic). I’m interested in having all of these folks see the paintings, of course—I’m rather proud of what I’ve been doing—and if any of these women were willing to sit for a modeling session, I’d be delighted to have them, and to paint their torsos. (The photos I’ve been working from are mostly of younger women in good shape—the former girlfriend who sent most of the nude photos of herself had a spectacular figure, and the photos from the web are typically young women in terrific shape, too. But I would be happy to paint some torsos that are less taut, with graying pubic hair, paunchier, cellulite, etc. as well.) Since the women are not at all identifiable in these paintings –their faces aren’t anywhere close to being included on canvas—there’s no way they could be identified with the paintings, other than by someone who knew them very intimately, and some of them have joked about being willing to pose for me.
Frankly, this is a little awkward—I’d love to have any of them pose, but I am not at all sure if they can do it without there being a sexual innuendo. Further complicating the matter is that with some of them, I wouldn’t mind a sexual innuendo, though very few of these women seem like good prospects for anything like a relationship. Basically, they’re a group of women whom I know to varying degrees who have joked about posing for a nude painting of their torso—some of the joking may be (probably is) to discourage my asking them. “I’d love to see these paintings,” one co-worker told me last week, after looking at my portfolio online. “Twenty years ago, when I was trim and slim, I might have offered to pose for you.” I told her, “Actually, I’d prefer a more mature model. Older women with fuller figures are more interesting to paint,” and she just smiled and said, “I’d be too embarrassed, but thanks for the compliment.” She’s coming to my studio over Spring Break (next week), I think, and I’m uncertain how to pursue her posing, especially for a photo, and I’ve had similar conversations with at least a half-dozen other women, all of them expressing interest in my artwork, a desire to visit my studio sometime soon, and a semi-serious offer (maybe semi-demi-serious) to pose for a nude torso portrait. I could just let it drop, of course, until they wanted to pursue the subject further—probably that would be the wisest option—but otoh I do want to have more models available, and this is the likeliest source of models available to me. (I could go for professional models, which would be costly, of course, and also I’d wonder if the models willing to pose for an unknown artist taking photos of their genitals for money might not be in another line of work altogether.) Any thoughts?
I’ll be glad to show you samples of my current work by an e-mailed attachment, if you write to me at irafuse at gmail dot com. I suppose I could post some here (as my avatar?) though I’m leery about violating any standards of propriety that domebo may have. I sure couldn’t post this discussion at the current SDMB, that’s for sure, much less the images themselves, but I’d be grateful for any input you folks might have.