In the decade between 1976 and 1987 Dixie Friend Gay created dozens of detailed drawings and etchings, which gradually developed from monochrome naturalistic sensual forms with a suggestion of sexuality into complex coloured works with titles like ‘Touch Me Deeply’, ‘Animal Lust’, and ‘Unbridled’. How much this exploration was related to her personal life we can only imagine, but sadly for the development of specifically erotic art Dixie moved away from this subject matter after the move to Houston.

However, the Artist’s Statement on her website, though referring to her painting, tells us about the inspiration for all her work: ‘The solitude and total immersion deepen the satisfaction of stroking colours onto canvas. Painting is the ecstasy of building a relationship through private conversations and then, as the final varnish is applied, a disentanglement from that intimate other. What always follows is the anticipation of the next new liaison that will be better than any before, perfect, pure and so alluring. Perhaps this coming together and letting go is universal to the creative process. Central to my paintings is the divining of an altered state of consciousness, a celebration of disorientation. The elation of nature distorted through the psyche, twisted by technology, is echoed in the final flicks of paint. In public art, my approach is to fuse the constraints of the space and the needs of the client so seamlessly with my own vision that the resulting project feels as though nothing could have existed alone.’

It isn’t hard to relate this intimate approach to these works from her time in New York.