Painting    

Acrylic and collage on canvas.
30 x 48 inches

© Kasten Searles 2004
kasten@artinjury.com

The work is a commentary on female sexual ideals in our culture. This ideal is inescapable in our daily lives. Our world saturated with thin, sexualized female forms in advertising and all types of media. The ideal female form is made possible only by a population that accepts it. I wanted to depict both the ideal and the male population that seeks the ideal to fulfill their sexual fantasy.

I felt that collage was necessary to represent the overwhelming male audience. The photographs were sent from the men themselves, in search of a willing and attractive female image. Pornography and idealized female forms are so popular in our society, but the auto erotic, voyeuristic male that supports those forms usually remains unseen. I wanted to create a work with the initial attraction of the ideal, then the repulsion of what is behind it. Both the repulsion and attraction are created by our cultural ideals.