New Hero: Kim Manning
“Get F*cked”
AURORE sat down with erotic artist Kim Manning to discuss portrayals of intimacy, the unpredictability of watercolor, and censorship on Instagram.
Why and how did you start creating erotic art?
My initial interest in erotic art came about roughly 11 years ago. I’ve always loved drawing and painting a variety of subject matter (and still do). But it was when I was studying at SCA (Sydney College of the Arts) in 2009 that I first started dabbling with erotic themes.
One of my mentors at the time had brought it to my attention that if I only paint or depict images purely because they are aesthetically pleasing, they risk becoming decoration and will be inevitably overlooked and under-appreciated. This resonated with me greatly. I wanted to challenge myself and create work with the intention of eliciting raw emotion from my viewers. I wanted to create work that would stir.
I sat with this thought for a few days and kept coming back to the idea of sex. There’s so much power in sex. It has the potential to make us feel absolute ecstasy, but it also has the ability to creep into and give voice to the darkest and most shameful corners of our psyche. Not to mention sex comes in so many various forms. What a limitless subject to play with! The idea excited me. I loved studying human anatomy and painting bodily forms. I loved painting movement. It was a natural artistic progression for me to begin painting people fucking.
I began sketching some images from the back of a porno DVD I had stashed under my bed (as I was a poor uni student, this was before the internet was at my fingertips). I brought the drawing and paintings into uni and thoroughly enjoyed the reactions they received. Some people loved it, some people were visibly uncomfortable. I thrived on the contrast in feedback. I would hang my erotic pieces around my studio at SCA and often when my male peers realized it was a woman creating the work, they seemed a little disarmed and I liked that. It felt like I was reclaiming an authority over my experience of sex that I hadn’t realized was missing.
“Reverse”
How does your art connect with your own body image, sexuality, expression?
Funnily enough, I often reference my own body and face in a lot of my pieces if I need to capture certain angles or lighting. But I must admit, although some of my work was born out of personal experience, the bulk of my practice isn’t deeply connected to my own story. I feel more as if I’m a conduit attempting to celebrate all forms of sex and sexuality. I work with all colors and shapes, I rarely depict skin color, and I steer from creating solely heteronormative work because I’d like my art to be all-inclusive.
Where/How do you find inspiration for your artwork?
In a practical sense, I’m inspired by and reference explicit photographs, pornographic magazines, websites, personal memories and fantasies. From here I disaggregate and reinterpret the original source material by mapping it out on either paper or canvas with a keen focus on light, shape, feeling and mood. The next stage is fleshing out the image with a variety of mediums. I’m always aiming to create a balanced fusion of high and low art forms.
When you're painting/sketching what is your inner narrative like?
To be honest, I enter quite a meditative state. I feel most at peace when I’m in a good flow of painting. I can work for hours on end without realizing how much time has passed.
What feelings/concepts are you hoping to capture in your art?
In a theoretical sense, my art is an exploration of the personal concern that contemporary culture is controlled and mediated by images, blurring the line between the real and the represented. I hone in on this concern by engaging with the idea that the hyperreal and oversaturated world of hardcore pornography makes it quite easy for viewers to disassociate with what they are watching, creating an unrealistic idea of what sex should be like. In an attempt to combat this notion, I like to illustrate moments of sensitivity and intimacy that are imbedded in erotic scenes.
“Lovers”
There are many caresses and soft touches that accompany my explicit works. I aim to depict moments that are rife with passion and vulnerability, promoting a sense of seduction and encouraging our imagination to create the rest of the story. I think this is most successfully achieved when there is the suggestion of a deeper human connection. I want my subjects to be present and I want my viewers to relate to these tableaux.
Why did you choose watercolor as your medium?
Even though I do often work with other mediums (acrylic paint, pencil, charcoal, pastels), I do find that watercolors are the most successful for representing eroticism. Everything flows and blends, creating movement and unpredictability. There are no outlines to constrain or bind the moment. Every brush stroke bleeds into the next. This loss of control in the creative process is representative of how sex often feels.
Do you have a favorite position/body part to paint?
I thoroughly enjoy painting all positions and bodies. But I’d say I feel best painting women in moments of intense and honest pleasure. And not the performative “pleasure” that we often see in pornography, but authentic, raw, vulnerable pleasure.
Hands, eyes, breasts and nipples are my favorite body parts to paint.
How do you want people to feel when they experience your art?
Represented, excited and safe.
“Bounce”
We noticed you started censoring your Instagram posts in compliance with the new guidelines, what are your thoughts on the new community rules?
I’m definitely not a fan of the new community guidelines. I’ve had my art account on Instagram shut down a few times in the past because my art was deemed as “nudity” and hence violated community guidelines. This was tough because my connections through Instagram have become my main source of income. I wrote to the team at Instagram, explained my situation and my loss of income. I had read the community guidelines and they stipulate that nudity is acceptable in photos of art or sculptures. I never heard back from anyone at Instagram but my account was reinstated a few weeks later.
So unfortunately I have to take extra measures to comply with the new guidelines because I can’t risk having this platform taken away again. I am a full-time artist and if I have no way of showcasing my work, my sales and my reach will be severely affected. It is actually quite an emotional process having to alter and blur parts of my work. I don’t like having to do it, but the threat of losing my account and the connections I’ve built would affect me more.
Instagram's censorship rules predominantly harm those that work in the sex industry. I’m friends with and follow a few people who work in the sex industry and it’s very frustrating when you see accounts get shut down just because someone identifies as a sex worker or is transparent about their work on social media.
I understand that not everything can be shown on platforms like Instagram because children may have access to these accounts. So I suppose to a degree, censorship is necessary. But when someone’s livelihood is at stake, I don’t think that hastily disabling accounts should be the solution. Perhaps they should introduce the idea of 18+ accounts so that underage kids cannot access explicit or harmful content.
Finish this sentence: In a perfect world, erotic art/sexuality would be...
Celebrated by all.