Untitled

Abstract

Artist's statement: "This is a large-scale pornographic image of a male and female engaging in sexual intercourse. The image is framed in a way where neither figure is presented in it’s entirety, focusing on the male genitals, seemingly making this the most important part of the painting, body, and sexual encounter. The male genitals, female butt, and male hands are in the foreground of the field and thus appear to be the largest body parts. The composition is appropriated from an actual pornographic image found on the Internet and I intended to be equally as graphic. To do this, I kept most of the formal aspects, only changing the color, background and the expression of the female. Instead of recreating the over-dramatized female face, I interchanged it with a placid, preoccupied face to represent how many women often feel during not the porn industry, but also in their real lives. I also made her head camouflage into the background, as if she is not only mentally not present, but almost physically disappearing as well to represent her potential desire to be somewhere else. In this painting, I was specifically interested in the sex-positive feminist approach many women take when entering the porn industry, and how this is countered by the males needs continuously being put above the females. I wanted to emphasize this by my color choice, making the male green and alien-like, representing the corruptness and greediness of males in the porn industry. The way the man is grabbing at the woman’s butt and the indents his fingers are making is also suppose to reinforce this, by disregarding her comfort and needs and catering solely to what he wants. I painted this without a paintbrush, and only with a palate knives. I wanted to remove myself from the intimate practice of painting to reinforce the un-intimate interaction in the painting. By using the palate knife to apply paint, I had to smack and hit the canvas, which was a more aggressive way to apply paint and mirrored the very physical, aggressive interaction between the figures."

This is a digital photograph of Marry Millis's painting. It was submitted as an assignment in the spring 2016 Intermediate/Advanced Painting class taught by Professor Erin Harmon.