:: 2017 :: 60cm x 120cm ('The Ecstasy In Me' Panel #1) :: Acrylics, Inks & Markers on Canvas ::
The initiating factor for this panel was a number of sexual experiences in which I experienced being spontaneously propelled, without any psychedelic or plant teacher, into a multi-dimensional world of stars, simply through the ecstatic action of the sex. The first time it happened surprised me greatly, but I threw myself into it with eagerness. In 2014, the experience was deepened during my one and only ayahuasca experience: here I fell through the same arena of stars but without any sexual activity. This development deepened my subsequent sexual experiences.
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This was originally envisaged to be a stand-alone artwork before evolving, at first into a series, and then into the present triptych. Among several motivations in creating the work was to skewer much of the complacency I saw in heteronormative, pseudo-visionary artworks purporting to depict 'sacred sexuality'. One of the most banal aspects of many of these artworks is how they often fail to depict the actual sexual activity the artwork supposedly narrates! The viewer's eye is led away rom the ecstatic truth into something more comforting.
There is no such easy comfort here! I am riding with surprised, elevated wonder, gazing through a world of blazing light, into the viewer, and revealing the wild sexual origin and cause of my ecstasy with frank openness and, I hope, something of a subtle challenge too.
