"Format, text and image describes the mindset of this work.

Format: I have a basic color scheme, a sense of taste and connoisseurship towards the emerging piece. It is refinement, an awareness of a fashion sense, of a contemporary feminine perspective with no shame attached to the superficiality of allocating, reclaiming these sensibilities for the phenomenal object. This work is about beauty.

Text: Gentle Bondage tells an Italian story which I have written and translated into Italian and scribed with a fine hand onto the canvas as a ground on which to build the images. The obsfucation is intentional for the content is erotic, a tale of Angelo and Tiziano, which is the name we have translated into English as Titian. The philosophical ground of the text adheres to the teachings and guidance of a masterful perception and a vigorous execution of the experience of art making. The text asserts the erotic implications of art.

Image: There is a banality to the imagery, a romantic nuance that has to be worked against in order to rescue the visual content. By rendering the flowers, the lace, the fragile skeletons, my personal visual vocabulary, with a reflective precision an appeal is made to the viewer. The work craves acceptance. It demands a place as a phenomenal object in the myriad of stimulating things that occupy our lives. The authoritative voice is persuasive; the imagery is sycophant with a secure manipulative intent. It is the seduction of a woman. It is a gift

Julie Oakes