HELENA CLARKE

EROTIC PAINTING | SPUNK ROCK | MANCHESTER, UK

Who is Helena Clarke and where did the inspiration for your alter ego, Spunk Rock, come from?

I’m 28, call it 29, I’m from south London, I have a weird background of theatre and teaching but now I’m doing art full time and Spunk Rock is less of an alter ego than a mission objective to me! 

How do you describe the style of your art?

Graphic and naive.

What sparks the ideas for your creations?

Innuendo, puns, anything out of the ordinary, people I’ve slept with and people I want to sleep with.

What’s your artistic process?

I don’t know how I’d describe it but I definitely have a “lightbulb moment face” That I feel myself doing when I get a nice idea. The rest is moving paint around.

What goes through your mind when you draw those first lines of a creation?

So much. I’m always thinking about whether my intention is good and what the interpretations from others might be. 

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Who are the women you paint? 

Women isn’t the right word, but 70% of the bodies I paint are some sort of self portrait. It doesn’t feel natural or interesting to just paint myself though so I do create other subjects. They’re all getting good sex, that’s the connection!

So, in your opinion, what is ‘good sex’?

Completely Consensual. Frantic. Unscripted. Being able to ask for what you want. Really SEEING and BEING SEEN by your partner(s). Getting off on feeling dirty. 

Our own art often helps us to process our thoughts and desires. In what ways has your exploration with art helped you in your sexual journey?

It’s stopped me from having as much sex with strangers, though there’s nothing wrong with that, and it’s given me a need to know about every possible sexual outcome that could ever happen.

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In your view what does it mean to be sexually confident?

To me it makes me happy but it does not maketh the man, as it were. It’s ok to not know what you’re doing. There’s definitely power in sexual confidence as someone who has a marginalised body (for example I’m tall and fat) because it helps others in their own journeys to body acceptance. 

Let’s talk about censorship because I know it’s something that has affected you. We live in a social media world where audiences are at once accessible, which is amazing for awareness, but at the same time we’re being silenced for embracing our sexual selves. Can you talk about your experience with this?

The main thing to remember is that social media is now deadly focused on being a “respectable” (though I use the term loosely) place so that big companies will buy advertising space on them without worrying it’ll in some way hurt their precious name. To me that’s the crux of all of this censorship but the most ridiculous part is that a platform like Instagram doesn’t realise how influential sex positive accounts are, how people literally log in every day to access them, and without them, it will be a boring, sterile place and eventually people will jump ship. Look what happened to tumblr! It’s a huge subject to talk about and I’d be remiss in suggesting the only reason censorship happens is because of advertising, but I don’t know how long you have. 

A piece of art is no longer a lonesome piece on a gallery wall - social media has enabled a simple post to become an instant conversation about mental health, sexual health and censorship. How do you feel about your art as a form of advocacy for sexual empowerment?

I don’t tell people what my art does and doesn’t do. It’s not really anything. I don’t assume to empower because what’s empowering to some might be triggering and unsafe for others. So I won’t use descriptors such as “safe space” or “liberating” or “body positive” because I don’t believe my work is ever going to reach that level. Perhaps it’s defeatist or a cop out but I don’t know if it ever can. I like to think i aspire to these things but to say my work is empowering will alienate people that don’t find that to be the case. So I don’t label it and it mildly frustrates me when others do. 

If we were a CICADA on the wall and watched you in your artistic element, what would we see, hear, smell?

Lots of heavy breathing, some garbage on YouTube, coffee, BO, me spinning around in my desk chair.

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What’s been your biggest triumph as an artist in the erotic space?

I love my zine about Shakespeare and erotica, that was such a perfect project and I’m genuinely proud of it.

Can you tell us more about that?

I love Shakespeare’s work, it holds up very well even today about 400 years later. It’s also an important part of my relationship with my dad who was an actor and taught me so much about these plays. There is so much sex and filth hidden and not so hidden in Shakespeare’s stories, so pairing it with erotic art was a really cool marriage of the two things I’m most interested in in the world.

What was the last piece you worked on and where did you draw inspiration for that?

I think it was a piece of a woman pouring an obscene amount of lubricant on an obscene strap on dildo. Sometimes the simple ideas are the most fun. I photographed myself in the pose and painted it up. 

If you could invite 5 women, living or passed, to share wine with you, who would they be?

Mum, my sister, Sylvia Rivera, Amy Winehouse and the person reading this right now. 

LOCATION: Manchester, UK

WEBSITE: etsy.com/uk/shop/spunkrock

INSTAGRAM: @spunk.rock

TYPE OF ART: painting

PREFERRED MEDIUM: watercolour & ink

SIZE RANGE: a4 or smaller

OTHER DESIGN PRODUCTS: watch this space

PRICE RANGE: £4-10.50 for prints

COMMISSIONS: yes

WAITING TIME FOR COMMISSIONS: 2 weeks

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