Nurture/Nature

Recently, I purchased an old book, which my mother used to read to me back when I could not read myself. I guess I was four, maybe five years of age at the time. Like I said, it was an old book, and she had had it read to her by her mother, in her own youth; I think it was published in 1920, or there about. Eventually, it got lost, but now I have found this other copy, and it is back in the family again.

Although I couldn't read yet, I could look at the illustrations, and there was one illustration to which I kept returning, because it stirred this strange excitement, which I really couldn't place at the time. It was this illustration, by the artist Frans van Noorden:

Now, I remember clearly what excited me the most, was the posture of the woman on the floor. The fact that she was on her knees, and especially the strain she had to endure, simply only to look at the other woman, fascinated me. In fact, the whole period before I was introduced to bondage, through magazines ( paired to the huge discovery that there were other people like me, but that's another story), that's what fascinated me through out: women in awkward positions, in embarrassing situations. It goes as far back asI can remember, and a lot of it still is echoed in my work today, I think.