Jana Brike – first love on the edge of a deep dark forest from Anatomy of Innoncence series (2015)

This is not Brike’s best painting but it resonates with me more intensely than the rest.

In overview, Brike’s is a painter. Her work features pubescent characters with oversized heads–presumably to draw even more attention to her grasp for conveying uncanny nuance of expression.

The duality of innocence and curiosity is her conceptual prima materia. Her scenes often play out in or near bodies of water–i.e. Two Wound Angels on the Beach and Goldilock’s Holiday.

She trades in a number of thinly veiled tropes–masturbation (Gardener and the Centre of the Universe), sensuality (goodbye, Eden, Snow White and when I kissed the teacher), lesbian experimentation (anatomy lesson) and tangentially the girl-girl solidarity that is at once not sisterly, platonic or romantic but is simultaneously each of those things all at once (holiday at grandma’s place).

It’s also worth noting that while she’s always preoccupied with the first flush of physical lust, the occasionally presents it in very concrete ways. There’s an honesty to the diptych little miss sweetheart/gardener’s son that is the most concrete and unassuming depictions of nascent paraphilia this side of the girl with chapped lips from Tarkovsky’s Mirror.

A lot of her work appeals to me for these reasons. But the image I’ve chosen to post here does two things better than I think all the rest of her work combined. Too often, female sexuality potential is painted as an incitement for male sexual arousal. It’s a very heteropatriarchial framework.

This portrays something that is different. A wanting that is both a giving and a taking. The blush on her face and the demure way she is leaning in slightly while waiting for it to happen conveys a desire for what is happening to transpire but also presenting it as a choice that is completely lost on the shy but eager boy. There’s a sense of knowing there will be a debt entered into the ledger that will come due in time.

I don’t think it’s just my gender stuff; I think the audience is supposed to empathize with the young woman here. (My gender stuff just makes it more resonant for me because I have a thing where I want my lovers to see me completely, unhidden, naked and vulnerable while they are still safe and clothed.

I don’t know if it’s that I want them to have a chance to know what they’re getting into so that they can walk away if they want. So much that I know any dalliances with me are things I’ve been taught over time to accept cost far more than anyone really deems worth it.