Painting this piece gave me a way to get back to what I enjoy and relieve stress. The spring semester was difficult for me. I had a lot of distractions from making the artwork I care about. I've been told, by others who have been through a master's program, that my experience is normal but it didn't feel normal or helpful. The joys of the semester for me were the drawing class I taught and two electives that I took to help me with storytelling. The drawing class required a lot of still life set ups. I am especially attracted to phallic shapes. I put a lot of effort into not using phallic items when I set up a still life in class. Instead I used them for still life paintings for myself in my studio.

The background of this piece represents an internet of ghostly cumshots, present and past. I originally painted it bright orange. The shock of color provided an energy and focus for my brain. It pulled me into the paint. I added layers of marks and brushed them flat. The purple marks are people. The white streaks are ejaculate. As I blended the layers out they reminded me of the scene in Poltergeist when the ghosts come down the stairs. It made me think of the history of using internet pornography to masturbate. I thought about the more blended streaks as memories of joys past. I reinforced the orange peeking through the streaks to support the joy the piece provided for me. I added prominent white streaks with varied paths to propel the cumshots toward the sky as if the act of orgasm is equivalent to the thrust of fireworks.

In the foreground I inserted phallic fruit into milk glass vases. They are cradled by a flower covered cloth by lifting the cloth to create a shroud like protrusion that drapes to each side of them. The flowers on the cloth are loose and not uniform to allow for the suggestion that they could be created by cum splatting onto the surface as it crashed down from being shot into the sky like fireworks. I cradled the cloth to provide privacy and safety for the phallic/vase display. I lit them directly to highlight the display. This private/highlighted display represents amateur internet pornography. The act of recording and sharing sex acts online is incredibly common but considered a deviant act to be hidden. Deviance is determined by the norms of the society. But what makes a common and sometimes expected act deviant? Is the act being deviant what makes it so appealing and common?