Georgia O'Keefe, besides being one of my favorite artists, was famous for her large scale oil paintings of flowers, such as these Calla lillies. Her art is incredibly sensual, and one reviewer saw her attention to flowers as representative of the female portions of the natural world. If you know what I mean. (Which, for the record, caused her to say, "I almost wept. I thought I would never face the world again." But still, the comment stuck and sexuality one of the things that people read into her work.)
In my view, our bodies are beautiful and amazing, but sacred. I wouldn't post pictures of nudes on my blog, but these lillies- aren't they gorgeous?
So I decided I'm comfortable writing in the style of Georgia O'Keefe. I can talk about the lillies, about hands and skin and cheekbones and lips. And that's enough for me. I trust the reader to make the connections, that the emotion will come through.
Here's my Georgia O'Keefe writing. (My protag is an empath whose skin changes color as she experiences her own and others' emotions. She's pleading with Agent Hatton to explain the secrets of mortal life life to her. Her skin turned black as if she were being burned in a fire in a previous scene.)
Agent Hatton looked at me with pity in his eyes, pity and something else I couldn’t name.I love reading a good love scene that isn't crude. Stephenie Meyer comes to mind- I think she's pretty much the master of not-in-the-room sensuality.
“Your body already knows what to do.” His words were soft and intimate. I tried not to think of how they would have tasted to me before. He stepped closer until our toes bumped into each other, but I didn’t move away.
Mother help me, I wanted to lean in.
“I think that fire is your body shouting at you.” He took my face in his hands and touched his forehead to mine. He smelled of woodsmoke and grass gone to seed. “You don’t even know what you’ve done to me.”
I couldn’t move even if I’d wanted to. His thumbs rubbed in broad strokes on my cheeks and his touch calmed me. I still couldn’t feel what was behind his twisted expression, but the motion itself was powerful in a way I hadn’t expected. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do. You’re the psychic or whatever, but I know when a woman wants to be kissed.” He looked peculiar, but it wasn’t bad, just powerful. “Whenever I think about kissing you, your skin turns this beautiful purple, like the inside of an abalone shell.”
I peeked at my hands; a rich eggplant color was creeping into my fingers.
He released me and trailed his knuckles down my face. “Kissing you was the last thing on my mind, so I know it was your idea, but I should still tell you no.”
I suddenly wished for my empathy to return; I was blind. “What’s a kiss?”
His eyes slid off of mine, down to my mouth and then back up. “Part of the dance.”
Any thoughts?
And as a bonus, here's one of my favorite O'Keefe paintings, with strangers thrown in for scale. I'm not sure what the clouds represent. Cellulite?
This travel blog photo's source is TravelPod page: Georgia O'Keefe - "Sky Above Clouds IV", Chicago, United States
Glutton for Punishment?
A few things, in any order. Zombies, vampires, werewolves, fairies, demons, (or faeries, daemons if you prefer) mean teen-age girls, clumsy teen-age boys with secret powers. And mindmelding dragons.
Fairy boarding school? Time-traveling vampires? Dragons in the Temple of Doom, Zombies in corsets? Wait- that's been done. (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I read the first two pages while browsing and it looked amusing.)
