Leather Archives & Museum: 25 Years (1991-2016) [digital]

Magazine. He took on the name Etienne,
French for Stephen, his middle name, for his
traditional oil, acrylic and graphite panels,
storylet tableaux and Stephen, for his more
thematic pen and ink comics-style fetish
creations. He was a great storyteller, always
with a narrative, and became well known for
his multi-paneled story arcs, ranging from six
to over twenty panels long.
As noted, Dom pushed boundaries. One of
his early Kris Art storylets, “The Young
Warriors,” featured full frontal nudity in mail
order sets very early on. While, indicative of
the time, he suggestively drew his subjects
with strategic coverings, many of his original
works and stories were later altered or
redrawn to show full nudes. Never classically
trained in life drawing, some of his works
were proportioned to a less even degree than
others but never exaggerated to unbelievable
nor grotesque extremes. What was in
evidence, was his innate ability to draw the
male form from any angle, often to best effect
viewing from above or below, to emphasize
the power of dominance and submissiveness
of certain positions, especially of captives. He
exhibited an uncanny appreciation and
knowledge of the body’s physiology and
musculature.
eroticism.
By the early 1970s, Dom was splitting his
time between Chicago and a back country
house in Pennsylvania . Here, he had the
chance to concentrate on his art over longer
periods, resulting in some very masterful and
long “Stephen” story series, which he
completed while resident artist for friend Lou
Thomas’ Target Studios. These published
works included the Adventuretime series,
Meatman, Star Trick, and Troopship, to name
a few (many of which were re-released in the
1980s as part of Falcon Studio’s Storytime
books). Pen and ink drawings for most of
these are found in the Original Art Collection,
while published versions are in the Teri Rose
Library.
These drawings were accompanied by story
text, written by Dom himself, as well as
notable kink writers such as Jeff Kincaid. The
comic series gave Dom an opportunity to
introduce a high degree of dry humor. He put
his men into situations entirely implausible or
impossible in real life and often with
excruciating degrees of BDSM, but his humor
Striving for artistic perfection, some other
early works were reworked and reinvented
into new series (example: Jack from the
unpublished “Cop Rape” series became Sgt.
Mack McAllister in “Marine Training”).
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, his work
quickly developed its own recognizable style,
reflecting a high degree of realism and of the
masculine ideal, not to mention, Dom’s own
fetish leanings. His rendered chests became
broader, clothing succumbed to ripping and
his feet --booted, sneakered, socked, or
naked, received a particular emphasis. Other
fetishes given the spotlight were military
(seminally, Navy) uniforms, cowboys,
superheroes and, of course, Leather/Levi.
Also present but rarely seen were nods to
watersports and scat. From the beginning,
Dom strived for meticulous, fully-rendered
detail in his primary subjects. His acrylics and
oils showed an intense if not brooding
masculinity, with rich brushstrokes and great
depth. His graphite works often took a week
to build and fully shade, as Dom felt that
facial expression was crucial to conveying
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