Has sex become something more painful than enjoyable for me? For the most part. Whenever I draw battle scenes I wonder if this is the relationship I have with physical intimacy. It’s less mysterious and magical for me and I’ve - almost - learned to live without it. Now I think it’s so much more complicated, something I almost fear. I look at some of my old imagery and smile at how wonderfully naive my relationship to my own sexuality was. When I first started to work with sexual imagery it was something joyous, something I celebrated. Sex and violence run amuck through these pages. There are stories of women getting their breasts cut off, or images of bloody war and people being decapitated, yet it’s so easy to look at and understand, you almost don’t want to look away. Medieval imagery is bizarre because it makes really intense topics easier to digest. I paint manuscripts and the miniature which, to loosely explain, are those handmade books that are really sparkly. My current work comes from the medieval past.
When did you begin to incorporate sexuality/sexual imagery in your art? Your work has a lot of subtle themes: sexuality, religion, history, politics - heavy stuff. So does my work revolve around my sexuality? Absolutely not.ĭoes it tap into an anger felt when I was cornered into an identity at an early age? Sometimes.ĭo I feel the need to say fuck you to people who work from this traditional system? Perhaps, but eloquently. I needed to create a space that I could exist in with all of my perversions. People demonized this small and unimportant part of me, which is probably where my personal mythos began. I remember growing up and everyone was always concerned with my sexuality, like it was some shadowy creature that lingered in the forest:Īnd my favorite “Oh, he’s just creative.” NC is filled with a mythos of prejudice that revolves around the word of the church. You can find in the marginalia the will of the imagination even in a past ruled by a hierarchy with the singular voice of the Church.īecause I’m currently living in a place with a system run on this same religious ordinance, I feel responsible to do as scribes of the past did. Whenever I’m looking at old imagery from the medieval times I feel responsible for upholding the quality of my perversions. So you just moved back to the south and you’re getting a lot of attention, how does it feel to be not-so-wholesome in the bible belt? I recently spoke with Calhoun about this change and his use of medieval imagery in his tiny paintings to illustrate the nature of the political and social world and how it intersects with his own relationship with sexuality, identity, intimacy, shame, and darkness. For Raleigh-based miniature painter and manuscript creator, Conner Calhoun, the shift from the NYC art world to Raleigh, North Carolina’s contemporary art world serves as the creative fodder for his latest work. For the creatives, the weirdos, the queers, the nuts, sluts, and perverts among us, this sentiment is felt even stronger than the rest. After living in New York City, there hardly seems a point to living anywhere else.
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