See links on the left for the doodlings.
FAQ:
Why, oh why, would anyone paint with their period?!
It's so disgusting!!
First
of all, I know quite well that not everyone can be at peace with
these doodlings of mine. And, indeed, they were not made with the
intention to please everyone, but with the intention to please
*me*.
There is an obvious element of disgust in these pictures, which is
fully intentional. There is so much hush-hush and embarrassment
surrounding the whole theme of menstruation, that it's interesting
to do something with it that shocks many people. The reactions so
far have been quite intriguing.
I might point out that I haven't been doing any menstrual paintings for a couple of years now. The main reason might be that since I got a menstrual cup it kind of detached me from the menstrual blood. When you use tampons and pads, you see all the blood on the pad or tampon when you take it out (and with pads you feel all the clots coming out), but a cup you empty in the toilet or shower right after taking it out, and there isn't much blood left in it when you rinse it before putting it back in.
Anyway, the following questions and ponderings were found in various discussion forums. Most of them are 'members only', so I couldn't reply directly to them. All I can do is write some sort of answers here. Sadly, the people who have commented on this stuff in these discussion forums are for the most part of the kind that don't have enough of an attention span to ever find their way to an FAQ page. A telling quote from "grovesd23": "Ok, I didn't even look. The other people's [sic] descriptions are enough. Eww!"
Topic 1: Nastiness
"GROSS!!!
Doesn't it SMELL?!"
Okay,
for one thing, regular blood doesn't smell horrible. Blood smells a bit
like metal (iron, actually), and in small doses you hardly notice any smell at all.
After a few days, menstrual blood might start smelling a bit
(though it also depends on your own personal hygiene). I used fresh
blood from the first day, which doesn't smell more than normal
blood. A short while after I'd finished the painting, it dried
out. No smell. No flies. No carnivorous beasts flocking my house
…
"YUCK! It must be totally UNHYGIENIC!"
I washed my hands
and my tools thoroughly after each session, and, as mentioned, the
paintings dried out afterwards, so they posed no sanitary risk worth
mentioning. You can compare it with old food, for instance. If it
stays 'wet', it will start decomposing in a nasty way, but if it
dries out, it's not nasty at all (just really hard to get off the
dishes).
Painting with menstrual blood
wouldn't seem more unhygienic than handling menstrual pads and
tampons. It might even be less unhygienic than handling tampons,
because I hardly ever got any blood on my fingers while painting.
"What if she has a DISEASE? NASTY!"
I am very happy to announce that I have no diseases whatsoever. Then again, no one besides me gets to see or touch the originals, anyway.
Topic 2: How it's done
"I see you use your divacup/mooncup/keeper/whatever for your paintings."
No, I don't. I actually stopped painting with my blood after I got a menstrual cup (see introduction above).
"I
think she just has a small container of blood sitting around.
Blood. Sitting around. Just buy some damn paint!"
I
personally didn't have any
containers. I squatted over a piece of paper and let it drip directly
on the surface. Then I painted the picture from the drops.
I have plenty of paint, for that matter, and I paint with it, too.
The menstrual paintings were just one of my many different
projects.
"But doesn't
blood congeal?"
Yes,
it congeals, and it slowly turns brown. In the first few hours,
even after it's dried, it's still quite red, and that's when I
scanned the paintings. So that's why they look red in the gallery.
By now, all of those pictures have turned sepia, though.
"Ew! Isn't it illegal to send bodily fluids through the mail?"
I'd never send any originals through mail. That would be pointless, because blood is a pretty crappy material for making paintings that would last. It dries and becomes brown, and it crumbles off the paper. But thanks to technological advances, I can scan the paintings and make prints - with no trace of blood whatsoever.
"Why paint with blood if the paintings don't last?"
Because fresh blood is different from other materials. You can't get the same result with anything else. It looks fascinating.
"I wonder if it's really real and if it is, how big the pics are in real life because in some of those there's a lot of "detail and color" ... no one can bleed that much in a month and if they are, they should be checked out."
Yes, it's really real. I don't quite know
how to prove that to you, though. Let's just say that there are
not many things other than menstrual blood (with all the nice
clots) that would look like this
when dried out on a piece of paper.
Many of the scans here are pretty much in real life size. Quite a
few are smaller than the originals, like the dragon
in month 12, which is about 42x30 cm (16'x12') in actual size.
According to what I learned in sexual education in school
(Hannover, Germany), a normal person bleeds by average about half
a cup each month. (If you bleed considerably less than half a cup
- like, two teaspoons - then maybe YOU should be checked out! :o)
Anyway, I don't know exactly how much you mean with "that
much", but remember that blood has plenty of pigment, so you
can paint a lot with just a few drops.
Topic 3: General questions
Do you actually consider yourself an artist?
Why, yes. But not really, or not only, because of these doodlings that I did a couple of years back.
Are you a maniac feminist who wants to kill off all men?
When I talk about this little way of
self-expression of mine with other (male) people, it's often easier for
them to accept it if I say that the most important part wasn't the fact
that it's menstrual blood I painted with, but just that it's blood,
and that I used menstrual blood only because it's about the only way
I could get blood without hurting anyone.
Sometimes, I can sense a certain fear in them of me
being some kind of maniac 'feminist' who would like to kill off all men.
(I mean, I am a maniac, and I am a feminist, but I don't
want to kill off all men ...) Painting with your menstrual blood
seems, according to them, to be something that this kind of 'feminists'
typically do.
Menstrual painting certainly has elements of
acknowledging - and even enjoying - something very important in female
life, that is a taboo in our society.
And just like it can be rather 'macho' of some male artists to paint
(unsuccessfully) with their seminal fluid, it can be a bit 'hembra'* for
some female artists to paint with their menstrual blood.
*) Hembra = 'a female'; the equivalent of the Spanish macho - 'a male'
"For the love of all that is good and holy, WHY?"
– "it makes them feel wymynlyylylye and moongoddesspowerful
or something."
I personally don't have any motives like aspirations for "wymynlyylylyeness" or "moongoddesspowerfulness". I'm basically a really rational person, with not much 'pagan' or 'wiccan' tendencies at all. I just like shocking and offending the public ... ha ha.
"Will you please kill yourself?!"
I
used to have a guestbook on my main site (not this blood section).
After a while, it was invaded by people who only kept talking
about my blood doodlings (giving both positive and negative
feedback), then by all sorts of spam. This entry from the first
invasion was quite interesting:
"Youre fucking nasty. That is disgusting. I suggest you go to
a theropist NOW to get your head checked out. Also, please dont
reproduce. You might pass this need to paint things with your
period blood to your children. Oh, and if you could do us one more
f"
[Here she/he didn't realise that there was a limit of 200
characters, though that was written next to the comment box. So
she/he had to make another entry:]
"Oh and to finish my sentence :roll: Please do us all a
favor, and tie a large bolder to your foot, and jump into Lake
Erie."
Poor thing. So full of anger. And so full of bad grammar and
ignorance. Like I'd to travel all the way to North America to kill
myself.
Anyway, all of you asking that - don't worry, I will die, like everyone else. No need to kill myself. It
will happen
eventually, if you're just patient enough.
"I think someone needs some serious help."
Maybe that someone is you? It's sad when people are disgusted by something that is a vital part of themselves.
"I bet she thinks she's soooooooo special and unique."
Well, actually, I started painting with my period before I even knew anyone else out there was doing the same thing (believe it or not ...). Soon, I learned that there are other people who do:
Blood Art - a collective live journal about menstrual painting
Art of Menstruation at the Museum of Menstruation
Other interesting links:
Urban Armor - kickass alternative menstrual hardware
Topic 4: Is my period normal?!
According to my statistics, a lot of people seem to find their way here wondering if strange occurrences like "brown menstrual blood", "menstrual blood clots", "black menstrual blood" etc. are normal. Maybe I can ease your anxiety a bit by telling you that these things are completely normal at least among all the three females in my family, and thus probably among a lot of other women (if not most).
Our periods begin with a little
bit of brown fluid, looking like congealed blood. On the day
after, the heavy artillery sets in, and lots of blood comes
gushing out. Most of the time, it comes mixed with big, fat black
clots of the mucous membrane from the womb. It would have nurtured
the egg if we'd have gotten pregnant, but must be cleaned out now,
since it won't be used. The first couple of days, the bloodflow is
also quite strong, but on the third or fourth day it starts
waning, and less and less comes out each day. During the last few
days, the blood becomes less red and more and more brownish and
blackish. That's because it has congealed. After 6-8 days it's all
over, and won't come back until next month (my cycle is about 30
days, while my mum's is 28 days and my sister's is about 26 days).
Pains, emotional instability, headaches and so on usually appear
on the day before the period, or on the first or second day. They
are as good as always gone the next day. My worst period-related
pains are described in month 8.
(Disclaimer: if you're using hormonal contraception, such as the pill or hormonal IUD's, your period might be VERY DIFFERENT from what is described here, because these things influence your menstruation a lot. All the women in my family have 'natural' and 'uncontrolled' menstruation cycles, and our boyfriends actually don't mind using condoms and coitus interruptus for contraception ... And if accidents happen, there's always levonorgestrel, the 'day-after pill'.)
Topic 5: Finally, this is my question to the world:
How can a woman be scared of
seeing blood?
I've met some women who are. I can understand why men might
be, because most of them only get exposed to blood resulting from
injuries of some sorts, but women? Who bleed healthily
every month through their periods?? I can understand 'disgusted'
(though it's sad), but scared???
