Art Premiere Deluxe: Dave Nestler

Any good businessman will tell you that when entering into a new venture, one of the keys to success is to know your competition and research the market you wish to compete. Where none of this sounds very art related, it certainly does apply. The Blonde and Gagged series was created out of this white collar mantra. As an artist, and an outsider, I took a look at the pinup market for everything it had to offer. From the artists to the fans, from the galleries to the publications, I took in as much information as I could get my hands on. I was pretty secure with my talent base and my placement on the artistic food chain. I had no want to do what everyone else was doing presently or even replicate what others had done in the past. Another big factor to be considered was my style. As a traditional brush painter with a flair for the photo-realistic, large areas of color such as in fine art nudes proposed a problem. My anal retentive, nose to the board, little tiny brushes style was too time-con­suming to be even remotely productive. And I wasn't about to go searching for the airbrush I abandoned many years before. I needed something to break up those large areas of flesh. I had been a fan of fetish photography for some time. Not from a lifestyle point of view, but a design approach. There was something striking in the way the bodies were positioned, and the way a soft flowing sexy curve of the female form could be broken up so severely by the attire accompanying a bondage scenario. But there was a subtle violence to it that disagreed with me. It was at that point when I decided to incorporate everything that was so appealing about pinup art. The innocence, the cheescake, the all-american girl next door, and blend it with the fetish images that I found so visually inspiring.
The black tape used in the Blonde and Gagged series served a multi-purpose role. While providing my paintings with that stark visu­al contrast I was after, it also eliminated the aggressiveness that was so prevalent in certain fetish situations. Scenarios were implied, not exploited. As in the painting "Lisann #2" there is no restraint, only satisfaction. In the painting "All are Welcome", there is no fear, only strength. As the series progressed, I started moving away from the fetish situations that appeared in some of the earlier works, and started using the tape as a design tool. The black tape had now become less of a device, and more of a signature as in "Blown Away". It also served to break up those large areas that frustrated me. Even from the beginning of the series, one of my original intentions was to explore other elements than the black tape, while still retaining the imagery of the Blonde and Gagged paintings. "Nina Hartly" and "Brushstroke" are the end results of that deviation. As this is an ongoing body of work, I'll continue to experiment, explore, and evolve. But never forget where it all started. I read some ad copy a long time ago that stated; "there are a hundred and one uses for duct tape". Now... there are a hundred and two.