I've decided to no longer accept boudoir photo bookings but to instead take on boudoir-ish portrait commission paintings. I've been asked about what happened so I felt I owe an explanation. I kind of dropped it suddenly and without warning.
IN THE EYE OF THE CAMERA'S BEHOLDER
Everyone is a photographer these days but I was one when it mattered differently, when it was film and manual camera, batteries not needed unless you wanted a flash. With Instagram filters, smartphones and a wide variety of photographic options it’s no longer the craft that fed my creativity or my soul back when I began my first boudoir shoots in the late 80s nor is it something that sustained me into the new millennium to the present. Photography has become a mainstream vision evolved from everyone's need to express themselves through the eyes of tiny cameras. And everyone does! Like, everyone. Countless imagery pours in daily on news-feeds from a variety of online sources. It's too much. For me, it's overwhelming. Each coin has two sides but at this point in my life experience, photography doesn't reel me in. It's often that when something becomes mainstream, I'm out trailing again. I dislike crowded paths. I don't do it on purpose but something in me refuses to feel the clusterfuck and forces me out, and so a new offshoot into the realm of eroticism develops.
IT'S THE STROKES, FOLKS
In painting, it’s up to you and your trained ability to see and to translate a vision onto something where you're not dependent upon technology: no camera issues and failures, no dead batteries, forgotten or corrupt SD cards, no mechanical malfunctions and truly, minimal unexpected external bullshit that can turn a challenge into a headache during the creative process. Of course, if you're an iPhone photographer, you're not quite getting me here but fact is, pro pics require a lot more than an iPhone. I feel that when a person begins to bitch about the little things that are simply part of the bigger picture and thus parts of the job that have no bitch rights, the passion is gone and it’s time to move on -- so I am.
Boudoir figure and portrait painting is currently more enjoyable and empowering to create than a photo album. The movements are different. It's harder on my arm and shoulder, sure, with those consistent strokes and it's much harder on my eyes, that intent focus on a canvas that after a while, my eyes cross and I have to walk away to sooth the burn. It's mentally challenging in ways photography isn't and one is simply that I'm not a mechanical - logistical person. I don't much care for mechanical things or planning logistics or anything actually that has too many straight lines, angles, details and clear need for mathematics for that matter.
Painting allows a curvy, loopy, non-conformed kind of expression and the full dependency is on me: my time, my efforts, my education, my focus, my failure and success, 100% my fault in good or bad result.
... this would be a good time to mention a side note on this since it's on my mind after a few recent articles I've read about girls and self-image (and a future blog I hope to get to):
I do not in any way feel or ever felt - unless someone told me that it could be so - that being a girl, a female, a woman hinders my ability in career achievements. Ever. In fact, it has always been and probably always will be that my actual ability and maybe personality have or may in the future hinder my success but never the fact that I have a sweet flower between my legs. This is a societal imposition of thought that I never subscribed to.
So much has influenced this change from photography to painting that I can't even begin on the topic except one word: growth. I still value boudoir photo albums and photographs and I absolutely feel every woman should have the experience at least once in her life. Totally. Here's my past boudoir page that discusses a little bit about why if you're interested (text just below the introduction). However, a painting is a different level of expression I feel privileged to know how to do and not everyone can paint people and that's more special for me than taking photographs right now.
I'm rather sad the photography didn't sustain my desires but it didn't. I still love good photography and appreciate it, for its functional purpose and for its artistic purposes. However, for me photographically there was always so much to deal with that the weights of those stresses overtook the pleasure of the imagery and its productions. When I began painting in acrylics, particularly the kind I do now where I mix my own paint, something strange happened and I couldn't break free. It was love at first stroke. (that would be a good cheesy opener for an erotic story, wouldn't it?...)
I found that I wanted to paint not photograph, plus, I needed the "safe zone" of a studio to do it in, with silence or music but ultimately to create in peace which meant alone. I've determined that 19 years in motherhood has terribly affected my ability to tolerate human bodies around me all day. I mean nothing mean here to others but I am in human heaven when I'm alone in the studio painting - again, all me, not me trying to help another person get what they need often to the point of my own suffering but me giving me what I need. It sounds narcissistic. It's not. This is healthy and needed. I've given a lot of myself to a lot of people over the years and so now I'm giving something to myself and what I've chosen is art and the time and place to make it. "Paint it and they will buy" is my knock off of "Build it and they will come".
WATCH OUT FOR THE OVERLOAD
For me personally, the overload of sensual and sexy (and pornographic) photography plastered everywhere on the Internet to see whether or not I want to while also keeping up with boudoir photography, along with a year of life figure drawing classes of naked people, painting the 2nd ART PORN collection due out in Las Vegas in omg a few months, plus much more that has happened personally have reshaped the way I view the human body, sexuality, women and men -- basically all that is life creating and sustaining.
There's a huge change inside and I've only cracked the shell. I don't know what to expect and quite frankly, other than what we can all expect - which is ultimately death at our door - nothing is forever. I've learned this, especially with heartbreaking news a few weeks ago that a 30-something friend passed away just 2 weeks after her birthday leaving behind 2 children under 10, after they lost their U.S. Army father to war a few years back. Both parents gone. Life's unfairness we can't control but our time and actions we can. I've emerged back into the light. I'm blinded quite honestly but art is my guide through the yellow brick road of life and "now" is what all the signs read and point to.
Less variety and more depth is perhaps the goal now and painting an image provides that, whereas with photography it was the opposite. It takes a lot of hours to make a painting and with it, you build a dialogue in your mind about the subject matter and so it makes you think and that usually then makes me research and so it becomes sort of an intellectual and artistic endeavor. I speak only for myself here. It gives me life, a reason to reach further each day.
Artistically, I made a leap in appreciating the sensual, subtle and authentic appeal of a painting’s interpretation of eroticism and/or one’s personal self over that of a photograph. It was unexpected and there's place for both - art and photography's expression of eroticism - but I am no longer both painter and photographer. Painting is a rich experience - a difference of Hershey's chocolate versus Belgium chocolate truffles. It's hard to go back to what used to be good but now isn't satisfying anymore. You can't fake satisfaction, or the materialization of change.
It's very awesome to sit in this seat of view and it's an exciting time in my creativity. It's not an easier path but it's a lot more fun and I think the best part of all, it diminishes the pressure of trying to satisfy a perfection that doesn't exist. In a painting you are an essence and expected to be imperfect. It's a path to self-love I never realized existed before and I look forward to passing that on to other women as I shelve my camera and trade it in for some stylish, light-weight soft brushes. :)
Contact me for information on boudoir portrait painting commissions.
