I didn’t know about Khadoma Colomby’s art until I happened upon her website after seeing an image online. The first thing I felt was WOW, on many levels.
First, I’ll show you my favorite painting of hers…
See what I mean? – WOW. If you’re anything like I was when I first saw her work, now you’re really curious.
I’ll let Khadoma speak for herself, from her website:
Hi. It’s Khadoma here. Resident pussy portraitist and ritual artist. I know this is some radical territory, so I wanted to say Hi, and share a bit more about my work. I have been doing this sacred work for about three years now, and have worked with over 40 women so far. My mission is to reconnect us to this potent and beautiful part of our bodies, and into a deeper relationship with self love, pleasure, and wholeness. Each piece is a healing journey. Our collective journey, from pain to power. My intention is to paint the revolution alive with each stroke of my brush, as I bring us back together into the wild nature that is our birthright.
Are you looking to ignite your wild feminine nature for a more turned on and erotically expressed experience of being alive? These offerings are for the curious and courageous woman ready to dive deeper into awakening her sensuality, sexuality, and creative life force through returning to the aliveness of her body. This work is rooted in vulva and womb connection, to awaken authentic feminine energy as the fuel for expression so that you can be and do what you are here for on this planet as a woman! It is work with the embodiment of Goddess, through art, movement, ritual, and remembering the sacred arts of Woman.
This is the mission of my Pussy Portrait work: To reveal one of the most vulnerable and hidden places of our bodies as women, and offer a new perspective. Both for each of us individually, and for the world at large. Behind each painting is a woman and her story, the story of all women, as we walk through the fires to heal shame and trauma, and reclaim the sovereign nature of our bodies. Each painting represents the courage to walk from pain to power, gaining freedom with each step as we find out who we are as a creative, sensually, sexually, and erotically expressed woman.
My mission is to bring Pussy and all that She represents, out of the shadows, and into the light, where She belongs. The art asks women to open hidden pockets of shame and bring them into the light of self acceptance and self love. The art invites us to look. Closely. And to develop a new perspective about something we have learned to turn away from.
The art invokes a radical act of reclamation and return to our sensual power.
Here is a sampling of her paintings:
Khadoma’s other work:
Menstrual Cycle Syncing
Are you a woman that fights with her menstrual cycle? Are you tired of being overwhelmed and surprised every month by the changes that happen? Are you finally ready to work with your body and her rhythms for more ease, creativity, and feminine creative flow?
This work will teach you the secrets of your cycle so that you can go from feeling burnt out and overstressed to feeling more embodied power in your life, business, relationships, and sexual expression. This work is key to loving your body and yourself in all your seasons as a a woman.
Womb healing
Have you heard of Womb Work and feel curious to learn more about what it is and how it may support you as a woman? Learning how to connect with your Womb Space is foundational in anchoring into your sacred feminine body, and the portal to your ground, intuition, pleasure, and creativity. These offerings are for you to discover how your Womb Space can be a daily tool for more life force, inner peace, pleasure, confidence, sensuality, magnetism, and intuitive knowing. Whether you are just starting your Womb journey, or have been working with her for awhile, this work will guide you into a new ground of instinctual embodied power.
This is a good moment to pause and say that we are all doing life – sometimes together, sometimes in isolation. Even if you’re not physically isolated from other people, you may be emotionally isolated. Even though movies and media all around us are no holds barred when it comes to sexuality, as individuals, we can be navigating this human life fairly alone in different ages and phases.
For example, and I’m sure many of you can relate, my mom and I didn’t have the kind of rapport that made talking about personal subjects natural or comfortable. When a parent imparts nothing in the personal or private realm to you throughout your young life, you’re forced to glean what you can from friends and movies. What experts those are. Thank goodness for a human sexuality class I took as part of my general education requirements at UCSB. Eight hundred of us freshmen and sophomores sat in Campbell Hall learning about menstrual cycles, masturbation, and ovulation and fertility times during the month from two professors who were married and excited about the subjects they were teaching. One day, we all even showed up to learn we’d be watching Northern European women reach orgasm on a screen the size of a house. That’s something I won’t forget.
Even once you’re savvier on the information front, certain times in life don’t make talking about deeply personal topics commonplace. I remember as a mom with young children many years ago, I was busy all day long giving every bit of my intellect and energy to our kids in order to provide them with all the love, activity, and learning possible each and every day. I would often go to bed exhausted and fairly lonely if I hadn’t interacted with many adults in the course of the day.
I imagine that many women, if they don’t have close friends to talk about personal subjects, get to older age having never discussed private subjects with anyone. I have a close friend who was married over 60 years who never talked about sex with her husband. I bet that isn’t unusual for certain generations and certain personality types.
Religion is perhaps the primary root rippling out into millions of people’s idealogies that keep mothers disconnected from daughters, fathers disconnected from sons, wives disconnected from husbands, and so on. Sexuality, one of the most basic human things that we all navigate, has been taught to the masses as something that’s bad. Older generations then teach younger generations to embody the same uncomfortability, ignorance, fear, and guilt surrounding conversations, choices, and habits.
My first thought about whether I’d entertain the idea of having a pussy portrait done was ‘No way.’ I bet many women would initially feel that as well. But there was another, latent thought beyond that initial knee-jerk reaction, a thought outside of emotion: It would be a good exercise in setting aside whatever belief systems were instilled in me that make me fear it, that hold me in a framework that I didn’t create. Who knows what the future holds…
In the meantime, I will conclude with a few more thoughts from Kadoma.
I know the path of embodiment and healing as a woman is many layered. You may be at the beginning of your journey, or you may be far into it and taking a deeper step in. Wherever you are, I meet you exactly where you are, and support your steps into the more liberated, connected, sovereign, and sensual woman that is calling you. Are you ready to explore how more freedom feels in your life? My passion is to support you on this path to your wild liberation. I can’t wait to meet you at the threshold – and help you uncover your treasures inside.
Love,
Khadoma Colomby
Your resident seeker and guide to all things sensual, wild, and free.
P.S. If you are feeling a stirring inside of you, we need to talk. My work is made just for you.
I give a lot of credit to Khadomy for having the courage to do the kind of work she feels drawn to do. It’s one thing to navigate your own sexuality to a place that is free and unburdened by social dogma, familial constraints, or harmful past trauma. It is quite another thing to make the jump of putting yourself out there in helping other women remove the layers that define, constrict, and bind them. It requires deep levels of acceptance and unjudgment, and means creating mental and physical spaces of safety and privacy that allow each woman to unpack, deconstruct, let go, and recreate at her own pace.
I would also like to suggest a book to you as you open your mind, explore new territory, and be reminded that you are not alone. For as many unique names, faces, fingerprints, and bodies we have, there are just as many unique thoughts on sexuality. Gillan Anderson, the actress in The X-Files decades ago, compiled a book called Want. Each page is a different description of an anonymous person’s sexual fantasies, submitted by hundreds of women around the world. Read this, and you’ll remember we humans are as diverse as we can imagine and yet as similar as we can be in this human experiment.
I also suggest you Google Emily Morse’s Sex and Communication Master Class. I subscribed to Master Class for a year, as it is fascinating to learn subjects again from “teachers” from all walks of life. When I watched the first few classes given by Morse, I learned how much I still don’t know. Here is a post about it.
Also, here is a post called “Period” that I wrote a few years ago about continuing to navigate some of the same “unmentionables” that begin in adolescence.
Finally, Khadoma’s painting at the beginning of this post will be on display at the beginning of May at the Seattle Erotic Art Festival, an annual event that has been happening almost 25 years now. Click here to go to the website for tickets and more information. Who knows, maybe I’ll see you there…
To learn more about Khadoma, go to her website.
And as she points out, wouldn’t it be nice if every gynecologist had this poster hanging in their office so that every woman remembered how unique and wonderful she is?
There is no normal, and we’re all in this together…
Photographs of Khadoma and her art courtesy of her website
