The Art of Fetish
Content warning: Nudity and sexually explicit content
This project is an exploration of fetish, the Dominatrix and sexually empowered female bodies, seen through the female gaze and artists perspective. I source erotic and pornographic imagery, creating works that depict sexually empowered women participating in fetish and BDSM. The paintings are fabricated through the female gaze and accentuate the interrelation of fetish and fine art, transforming the ‘lowbrow’ male targeted pornography into ‘high art’ featuring this underground fetish and dominatrix culture .
Through my use of paint, I critique traditional historical depictions of the female body within art. I use bold, confident and textured brushstrokes in my paintings of these powerful women; a stark contrast to historical paintings of women, often portrayed as passive and vulnerable, created with soft and subtle layers. Each painting features a dominant figure, the Dominatrix, either on her own or dominating another figure, her slave or submissive. The salve or submissive appears almost no more than a prop in the composition, highlighting the power and dominance the dominatrix figure exudes within the painting but also over the viewer. With my work I want to open the discussion of femdom fetish and the Dominatrix, ideally contributing to the decline of stigma surrounding this community.
