Acrylic on canvas

70 x 100 cm

Original artwork

Unframed

Dream of the Gardener's Husband belongs to a series of bright, erotic, playful paintings drawing loosely on Hokusai, Matisse's Pink Nude of 1935, and early photographic images of male bodies.

Here, the reclining blue figure is interrupted by a green serpent-like form that moves through the painting with both humour and threat. The flat pink field gives the work a theatrical directness, while the exaggerated  limbs, simplified body, and cartoon intensity keep the image unstable: part garden, part dream, part erotic joke.

The painting treats desire as strange, comic, bodily, and alive. It continues the series' interest in queer mythology, sexual energy, colour, distortion, and the freedom of drawing.