Tag Archives: Nudity

Wanda and Waldo

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Recently I spent some quality time with a long distance friend, in a private conversation on Facebook. It was nice. She needed an escape from her current woes, and as she loves my art, I was welcome to do a little show and tell with one of my current projects. She is quite taken with my technique(s), and so occasionally I’ll take the time to indulge her curiosity.

Through the course of explaining certain things, a new painting came into being. I described it as a marriage between two separate pieces. One is a bright & colorful and over a decade old. That’s “Palms Up”, as shown below. FYI, this is originally some simple streaks of ink markers on aluminum foil. Once those streaks were scanned, they were remolded into what you see here. The other picture is from this year – “The Rub” – based on an ink sketch on paper.

art by Lawrence Grodecki

The marrying occurs when the image of one is layered on top of the other. The result of the consummation is something entirely different, yet holds a noticeable resemblance to each:

art by Lawrence Grodecki

While the initial consummation only took a few minutes, the growth of the new creation took a little time . . . it has its own stages of development.

In this case though, my creation became two distinctly different figurative compositions, though the changes are minor in the big picture. And somehow The rub became more dominant over the poor palms. Trying to decide upon one of these new pictures over the other has become a real dilemma. Luckily, as an artist I am free to show you both. However, as in the parable of the chicken and the rooster, I cannot tell you which came first!

I’ll show you both pictures shortly. It took awhile to select the right titles, especially if I wanted to maintain the mystery of this chronology. So in the spirit of ladies first, I present to you, “Finding Wanda” followed immediately on the right by “Finding Waldo”.

new art by Lawrence Grodecki

I’m thinking of adding them both to my Saatchi Art Selections, hopefully in the next  day or so. But for now, out of curiosity, would you care to guess which came first? As to which one you prefer, I’ll leave that matter alone . . . none of my business . . . and I don’t want to make any political statement on the matter.

Body Language, or Parts of It!

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grandbeach_WP

Lately when I go to bed I start writing…fiction writing. Lately when I get up I realize that I’m now writing about something entirely different.

For example, this morning I woke up thinking about nudist colonies of all things. I’ve never been to one, and after this dream I’m sure I never will. Perhaps it’s a little of that Groucho Marx mentality that I’ve had most of my life, “Why would I belong to a club that would have me as a member?”

The dream, if you can call it that, is perhaps only an hour old and already it is hard to remember, especially how I got onto the topic in the first place. So here’s a snippet by recollection, but be warned, my dreams have a tendency to be ‘politically incorrect’.

I think what woke me was a kind of self-censorship as it seems I was already in ‘write-mode’. Should I really say that I feel bad if I don’t find all women adorable in their nudity? There is no need to get into graphical details or numbers of any sort. As for the men, it gets even worse in that department. It reminds me of a study I once read about that found women tend to rate themselves as being much heavier than others would, while men tend to see themselves as being much slimmer than others see them.

As for me, I’m certainly not half the man I used to be…more like one and a half!

I’m not so crazy about looking at myself naked at the best of times, so why would I want to subject others to my stature of exceeded limitations? So there are two basic things that I would worry about. One is that I’m too big, and the other is that I wouldn’t fit in!

Now I’m sure there are the purists out there who will claim it’s all about looking at the inner person and not the body, that you’re there for the intellectual experience. On that level I’d probably kick in with some smart-ass comment about some great thinkers who talk about the ‘mind, body and soul’ and then ask why we should ignore the middle part.

Then there is the whole issue of the narcissism of the whole scenario, perhaps even this dream itself? I just read a blog last night that touched on social networking as being a form of narcissism. There does seem to be something self-indulgent about this strange need to express one’s freedom…for me freedom has become a somewhat funny word, at the very least a very curious one!

It’s almost like making a statement like, “I’m naked, I can talk about anything now, and I’ll just shut off my sexual urges at my command”. (And on top of that, I’ll do my damnedest to hide any revulsion!). And that’s a lot of, ‘my my my’ isn’t it?

So there’s the crux of it, no nudist colony for me, though someday maybe I’ll visit a nude beach, who knows? With my luck I’d probably wind up in lawn chair sitting next to Stephen Hawkings with no visible tan lines…and nothing to say! 🙂

PS – The picture at the top is another of mine, though an unpublished one called “Grand Beach”.

PPS – When I find someone adorable, clothes don’t much matter, definitely much less than she thinks!