Making art is my path of engaged Buddhism–the radical act of creating beauty and using imagination to point the way to a better world.
Author Archives: Edward Ficklin
Buddhism and the Erotic
Why is the erotic, something so fundamental, powerful, and pleasurable criminalized, censored, and shamed? Because, if let loose it threatens to tear down the house which whiteness built.
Spartacus, queer hero
I can’t capture the entirety of queer experience in any single work or art. But, I can strive, one step at a time, one canvas at a time, to tell better stories than what I had in my formative years.
The Path of Least Respectability
My art is a celebration of the erotic not just for pleasure alone, but pleasure as activism, pleasure as pathway to liberation.
John Carter, but make it gay!
The gay erotic surrealism of Burrough’s hyper-masculine hero John Carter unpacked through the medium of a new oil painting
A little modesty, please!
As nativism and fascist politics are on the rise everywhere, a heroine like Modesty is more vital and relevant than ever
Go Figure
Making art is grabbing some inchoate idea from the ether and trying wrestle it into physical existence. Always failing, really, but never stopping.
We are not free labor, we are not the product!
Imagine, if you will, our own queer, smutty twittergram where we share our work and our thoughts without fear of algorithmic erasure, trolls, or weaponized reports.
Watches of the Night
Like a walk in a garden, you catch a glimpse of delicate creature coyly flirting with visibility among the flowers. You feel a brief spark that invites a longer look and maybe leaves a gently joyous, lingering sensation.
The erotic as continuum–not binary
Why is sex, and the erotic in general, segregated in our storytelling?