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Sacred Sexuality in Painting

Sometimes a shape or a gesture has the power of invocation. The Female Form is glorious, and honorable. After all, most of us, except maybe Babaji, or Melchizedek, came through one. Why not honor it as a noble subject of painting? We came out of it, and many of us men want to go right back into it. Some kind of bliss and safety of the womb we wish to re-experience. Even dying men on the battlefield cry out for Mother.

I painted these “Mother Pods” in upstate New York at a rebirthing school Sondra was teaching. They were my meditation while she was speaking, and I think it is inspiring to watch a painter paint. Others in the room thought so. But when one lady was so impressed by one of the Mother Pod’s and wanted to purchase it, her husband said, “Not over my dead body,” under his breath. (Definitely his mind was ruled by the “Fig-Leaf Factor.”) Not all can handle it, and unite sexual imagery with the spiritual experience. He was “English.” The English are notorious for banning their most astute voices on this subject, as they did with D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover. No wonder. We Americans have inherited some of the same inhibitions by cultural proximity. Lawrence was banned in the USA as well. Sacred Sexuality, which is to say the honest truth about sex, had not yet come into vogue.

I painted on, though, having a good time doing it. For me these are “Pure Joy.” The colors are free; the strokes are direct and simple; and the subject is prominent but not overbearing or too literal. These are my gems of budding genitalia. They honor women’s most sacred zone, not demean it. As Lawrence honored it too. Not all sexually explicit images are “pornographic,” in the derogatory sense of the word — as Lawrence was finally published and recognized as producing high art. As was Michelangelo. Just look at David’s genitalia and see what I mean. Nothing more perfect had ever been sculpted.