In 2012, Seattle Erotic Art Festival unveiled our highest honor: Master of Erotic Art. The Masters of Erotic Art program showcases artists who have made meaningful contributions to the history and development of erotic art.
Varuna’s Rainbow by John Santerineross – SEAF2005
This year, we are honored to induct John Santerineross into this prestigious showcase. John’s work has graced the exhibition walls of the Seattle Erotic Art Festival since 2005. That first year boasted a large, bold piece that was one of the first viewed upon entering Consolidated Works. Since then, almost every year, John’s surreal and symbolic art has lured patrons into contemplating the darker side of eros. We are proud to bestow this honor on such an amazing artist.
John is often reluctant to describe his art, which does defy simple categorization. “I am often asked ‘what is your work about?’ or “what does it mean?’ and my response for the last 20 years has always been, it means what it means to you. Which is very true.” But, now, John has decided to give us all a glimpse of what his work is about to him.
Black Symbolism: the artwork of John Santerineross
If there is one central tenet held by the original Symbolist artists, it is that life is fundamentally mysterious, and artists must both respect and preserve this profound mystery. In both painting and poetry, they insisted on the use of suggestion rather than explicitness, symbols rather than description. Symbolists believed that “the creation of a mood is as important as the transmission of information; (it must also) seek to engage the entire mind and personality of the viewer by appealing to the viewer’s emotions and unconscious mind, as well as to their intellect”. The Symbolist painters used both mythological and dream imagery; the symbols used by Symbolist artists are not the familiar emblems of mainstream iconography, but intense personal, private, obscure and ambiguous references.
Corn Muffin Man by John Santerineross -SEAF2018
John Santerineross carries this philosophy one step further, stating that his artwork falls under the art movement of “Black Symbolism”, a term he coined in 1999. Under Black Symbolism, artwork is directly influenced by the darker aspect of the human psyche, the nightmares we try to suppress and the personal demons we all possess within ourselves. While the symbols remain personal and obscure, the focus is on the darker imagery of nightmares as opposed to the traditional dream imagery of the original art movement of Symbolism of the mid 19th century.
Black Symbolism is not confined to the original Symbolist’s principle of showcasing a reflection of life’s mysteries, but instead it also embodies the reflection of the darker side of individuals, the things that haunt us in our daily lives and are quite often spawned from childhood trauma. As children, we are fragile, innocent and malleable. Physical, mental or sexual abuse, abandonment or even the seemingly simple transgression of having non-compassionate parents leave permanent deep, scathing wounds to our psyche, invisible to the naked eye but still very much a part of who we are, becoming our own personal demons dwelling just beneath the surface.
It is John’s belief that theses things all to often influence the people that we become. John’s work manifests those demons living within us, things we all feel in our basic core as human beings. Often times this darkness is subtle, even inconceivable or unable to be explained with logic alone. John’s artwork represents the darker things that we all can relate to on a deep, subconscious level. It is these struggles with the darker side of ourselves that John captures in his photographs. There are two quotes that John Santerineross is known for that are actually statements that explain his philosophy: “We are all prisoners of our childhood” and “Embrace the animal. Strive for the human”
At SEAF 2018
John has graciously agreed to give a lecture during SEAF2018. Join John on Saturday, April 28th at 8pm for “Photography- is it art anymore?” A discussion on the changing world views on photography as a fine art.This art lecture and tour will start at the Masters of Erotic Art gallery, to the left of the Festival Store entrance. All lectures are included in your admission ticket.
In addition to two piece of artwork in the exhibition, smaller prints and John’s book, DREAMS, will be available for sale in the Festival Store.
John Santerineross joins those previously honored: Miss Indigo Blue; Paul Dahlquist; Betty Dodson; Jim Duvall; Ellen Forney; Charles Gatewood; Barbara Nitke; Michael Rosen; Michele Serchuk; David Steinberg.
Join us at this year’s Festival as we celebrate the work of all of our distinguished Masters of Erotic Art!