After the success of the inclusion of many of Lynn Paula Russell’s trademark spanking drawings in the 2000 Erotic Print Society’s overview of her work, A Sexual Odyssey, four years later the EPS reproduced nearly all of her previously unpublished illustrations from Janus and Februs in Painful Pleasures, an anthology which also included several of Paula’s editorials about corporal punishment, and a short story, ‘Rump Stake’, by Sarah Veitch.
Here is the EPS foreword to Painful Pleasures: The Erotic Art of Lynn Paula Russell.
It’s with great pleasure that the Erotic Print Society publishes another anthology of Lynn Paula Russell’s graphic work. This group of drawings is an essential addition to the books, dedicated to her art, that are already in print as it completes, more or less, a record of all the commissioned work she drew for Februs magazine. Februs is a magazine dedicated to corporal punishment, and has benefited over the years from Paula’s editorship and artwork.
Her drawings, unashamedly erotic and full of the energies and emotions of sex, appeal to a sophisticated audience. This audience is knowledgeable about the world of sadomasochism and corporal punishment and appreciative of the way her realistic, emotive style carries them effortlessly into a realm of fantasy that is as rare as it is wonderful. But they would be less able to escape to this world were it not for, in addition to an extraordinary imagination, the fine draughtsmanship and the innate sense of design and composition that is always present in Paula’s art. In this book we are fortunate enough to find a collection of some of her most outstanding work that portrays the sexual fetish of corporal punishment, or CP. In Painful Pleasures: The Erotic Art of Lynn Paula Russell, the focus is on her drawings commissioned to illustrate Februs, and in some cases, Janus, its sister magazine.
An important aspect of Paula’s work is more experimental and concerned with exploring the connection between human sexuality and Nature: exquisite, colour-drenched drawings where sensual bodies become landscapes and vice versa. These ‘bodyscapes’ are wonderful images, but they are not dealt with in this book: they feature in two earlier titles published by EPS, The Illustrative Art of Lynn Paula Russsell and A Sexual Odyssey. Yet another area that is more than adequately covered elsewhere is her excellent ‘adult comic’ work: Sabina I and Sabina II, two further EPS publications.
Consensual sado-masochistic fantasies and role-play acted out between couples are a way of coming to terms with the visceral (and often destructive) sexual aggression that needs to be understood and controlled. A safety valve, if you will, that, at the same time as blowing off essential steam, forms a conduit for all manner of sexual creativity between two individuals.
The theatre of pain is nor for everyone, but most of us will understand its potent allure for both sexes; it is a private world that Paula has been able to record, both through her sensitive, receptive observation and her very special talent for capturing the various distinct phases of such a relationship. It’s important to point out that any S&M relationship must be consensual to succeed, and that the masochist is as often the male as it is the female partner. Group S&M is obviously a more complex situation with its own set of dynamics and, to some extent, would defer partly to the rules and conventions of ordinary group sex, partly to the individual couples’ own set of rules.
So what is it that exerts such a powerful erotic force in these marvellous drawings? The most obvious explanation is the sense of delicious anticipation and those moments of sweet surrender that occur when we give ourselves over, trusting yet apprehensive, to the whims and fancies of the dominant partner in our relationship. The punishment itself and its attendant pain can be, through direct physical stimulation, another path to sexual gratification.
Finally, there is the afterglow, the deep feeling of peace and reconciliation occurring between lovers, where all is resolved and a harmonious balance restored. But there is no better guide to all three of these complex sexual conditions than Paula herself; by word and image she brings into play her talents and a special insight born of personal experience to show the reader a hidden door to a world of painful pleasures, where beauty surrenders meekly to her punishment with both love and passion.
