My paintings center a desire, shared with the viewer, for masculine forms. I heighten and recontextualize the desire with admixtures of the soft, vulnerable, spiritual, and occasionally humorous–qualities not normally associated with masculine. This is how I work with and for a queer gaze. Queer because we, my viewers and I, are knowingly transgressing the socially sanctioned expectations about who can desire whom or what and why. Together, we’re taking a journey on a path to nothing less than liberation. Erotic desires are a major, if not the central, driving life-force that animates our existence. By unlocking society’s shackles we become more fully ourselves, more fully connected to the world and the people that surround us.

My approach to the figure draws on the imagery of mid 20th-century beefcake. It’s a heady mix of gay physique photography, sci-fi/fantasy illustration, and the epoch-changing male allure first captured, but now ubiquitous, in advertisements of the late ‘90s from the likes of Calvin Klein or Abercrombie and Fitch. Those sources are fed through a mannerist lens of exaggeration designed to call attention to itself and to what enhances the allure. The final ingredient in the cocktail is a dash of surrealist inspired florals, landscapes, and imaginary creations designed to lead viewers to question the validity of dogmas like gender roles and hierarchy. The traditional vehicles of oil paint and canvas speak to me because of their unabashed sensuality and flexibility. It also helps that using such instruments of tradition to subvert the dominant paradigms of western art adds to the flavor.

I want these paintings to make the viewer feel represented. Not like looking in a mirror, but rather recognizing a shared desire free from editing or denial, knowing their gaze has merit, and is worth celebrating. To know they’re not alone.

Edward Ficklin (he/him), the maverick artist not afraid to say gay, is dedicated to creating erotic art as a pathway to liberation for all. His surrealist work centers the nude figure exploring its own delights, ranging from the sensual to the ecstatic. In defiance of the societal forces attempting erasure by legislation, algorithm, or so-called “community” standards, he delights viewers with imagery of sex and body positivity. His paintings have appeared in NYC galleries like Foley Gallery and the SoHo Project Space, national exhibitions dedicated to erotic art such as CLAW Leather Getaway Kinky Art Show and Tucson Erotica, and numerous naughty, but high quality, publications like Erotic Edges, Doable Guys, and Dirty Little Drawings. He likes his martinis straight up, with a twist, and, of course, made with gin. He adores the grit, freedom, and wild unpredictability of urban existence and continues, likely to the grave, attempts to get that orchid plant to bloom again.

The world is too damn straight!

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