About My Self Portraits:

What are the chains all about? No it isn’t S&M.  I thought at first that maybe it was in some way, but I honestly don’t know much about that world.  The chains that bind us in our lives to things that are sometimes uncomfortable, are significant to our personal makeup.  We often willingly  accept, even with some sort of pleasure, restrictions.  We stay in circumstances because we get something from them.  I’ve been thinking this whole thing over as I move forward with this series.  It is about sex too though... of course it is.

Am I still sexy?  Isn’t that what we all worry about once we feel we are “past our prime”? Are we supposed to turn off all those emotions, because we might not be a great attraction in a movie? Or maybe we never were, huh? Yet, being sexual is biological and we still feel it no matter what youth might tell us.

The "Primal Series", of a woman, me, not in her teens or even her 20's, is something that addresses issues important to a lot of women. Am I sexy? Am I pretty? Am I confident in who I am? Am I free to explore ideas, once hidden? So many questions answered for my own self and hopefully for other women my age, or any age for that matter.

I am not going to disappear just because I am not in my 20's or 30's or 40's.. wow. That is the way it has felt at times. Strange.

Mental notes of understanding who we are under the veil of who we hoped we would be as women or who we think we lost, are embraced by me within the cloak of all women.

Exploring that sexual side; embracing my own desires and trying to not just understand them but find out what they are! So many feeling for various reasons are pushed down and made incidental because society has claimed they should feel uncomfortable.

Finding any sense of rawness seems crazy past 40 or 50. But why? That is what I think I am finally concluding. As a lot of women get older they tend to feel themselves disappear. I am one. I see though through this whole series that I am working on, digging inside myself to find that essence of sexiness that is woman; hearing tiny cries from those emotions hid from my own self and letting them see the light of day, is luscious! Its not about being defined by others as being sexy, letting others decide my fate in how I feel about myself.. its about ME accepting who I really am and having the confidence to bring it all out on canvas. To not only see it but embrace and shine in it.

I want to reach deeper and find all the things about my own sexuality that have always been mine to know. I want to understand the passion I long to paint and comprehend what those emotions are.

Passion has a sense of violence about it, it is strong and it survives aggression. I don't want to paint passive art.. I want feel the obsession of lust inside its raw and primal pursuit. Within passion one finds a boldness full of enticing ambitions to grasp on to, that piece of your heart that presses you to go past the mark of a bystander, that spot you may have been told to stay put on. I will not stand on the X marked on the floor, not anymore.

It is not possible to feel apathetic when standing next to passion. I don't paint landscapes to hang above someone's couch, paintings meant to be a resting place for the mind? I want to paint feelings that one cannot dismiss. I hope to stir up feelings that overwhelm hidden agendas within the viewer as well as myself. It is not my goal to feel nothing but a sunny day or peacefulness, shiny trinkets that rest on walls that can be walked away from. I want to paint women who feel something. I paint myself as I define it and revel in the fact that I am made whole by my own journey of introspection.

I want to paint strength, sexuality, pain, power, a force of intensity, emotional qualities that generate a reaction. I don't want to paint the sky, I want to paint the dominance of the wind that caused it to be felt on ones skin, in the form of a woman. I pick up my brush or clay between my fingers and consider a certain belligerence, an attitude of confidence that meets the power I need to form an energy outside myself and I welcome it in. I paint or sculpt until I hear them breathing and their breath becomes my own.

I paint myself as I try to define the energy that is indeed my own sexuality but also all women whether they accept that part of themselves or not.

by Kathy Ostman-Magnusen

copyright 2009

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