Can I? is a document of a booty call, a moment of courtship before sex. Its about the parallels of pleasure in the indulgence of desert and desire. A delicious cake (a canelé, originally invented by, hopefully lesbian, nuns in the 16th century) is stolen and brought to a lover in a napkin as a gift, too delicious and sexually charged not to be shared. The highs of sugar and bodies. We are presented with all these suggestions of sex: the inside of the canelé is golden, glistening and inviting, there is the suggestion of a glass dildo in the corner, the ceramic plate is veiny and fleshy. The plate is a fig leaf, historically symbolic of hiding sexuality, genitals, or something ‘indecent’- here-queer sex.

The painting has these frictions, these elements of dis-ease- the red rose in the napkin a symbol of romance, the stitching of the embroidery makes it more thorny, dangerous; the plate is spikey throwing off sharp spears of shadows; the glass distorting the wood grain. Alluding to the heightened feelings around dating someone new- the adrenaline, the urgency, the insecurity, the unknown.