Artwork / Empathetic Magic / Clarissa and Thrash Fitting In and Standing Out
PG-13 (Clarissa and Thrash Fitting In) and NC-17 (Clarissa and Thrash Standing Out)
2017
acrylic on bird’s eye piqué
each painting 18 inches in diameter
Mistress Clarissa sang parts of her talk, hardly the typical presentation for a conference attended mostly by DC policy wonks and tech innovators. Then again, she wasn’t the average speaker either. She was a dominatrix who had just championed porn as one of the main motivators for creativity in technology and in art. She was the only speaker at the conference that I wanted to get to know better.
A few months later, I met up with Clarissa in New York, where she was living at the time. As part of my research for the portrait I’d paint of her, she invited me to a fetish photo shoot. She would be modeling a sex toy with Thrash, a submissive friend and sometime collaborator. We would be driving together to the location. I was about to get in the car when Thrash intercepted me, opening my door and then closing it again behind me. When I thanked him clumsily, Thrash waved his hand, dismissing my confusion. He explained that he was a female supremacist.
You can see some of the photos I used to make these paintings and watch the making of PG-13 or NC-17.
