title: Raw Erotica: Sex, Lust and Desire in Outsider Art
author: John Maizels
description: is editor/publisher of Raw Vision magazine, and author of Raw Creation (Phaidon) and Fantasy Worlds (Taschen).
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  # For James Laughlin
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _Is there then any terrestrial paradise where, amidst the whispering of the
  olive-leaves, people can be with whom they like and have what they like and
  take their ease in shadows andn coolness?_
  
  
  
  
  
  —Ford Madox Ford; THE GOOD SOLDIER
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  LOVE WEAVES ITS OWN TAPESTRY, SPINS ITS OWN GOLDEN thread, with its own sweet
  breath breathes into being its mysteries—bucolic, lusty, gentle as the eyes of
  daisies or thick with pain. And out of its own music creates the flesh of our
  lives. If the birds sing, the nudes are not far off. Even the dialogue of the
  frogs is rapturous.
  
  
  
  
  
  As for me, since late boyhood and early manhood, and throughout the more than
  eighteen years of my nearly perfect marriage, I always allowed myself to
  assume whatever shape was destined to be my own in the silken weave of Love’s
  pink panorama. I always went where the thread wound. No awkward hesitation, no
  prideful ravaging. At an early age I came t