“Only I Can Set the Pace!” — Prismacolor & Acrylic

This intimate composition by Edward Cushenberry centers on a cropped, seated figure — legs parted, hand resting with quiet certainty, gaze removed. The text beneath the frame, “Only I can set the pace!”, operates not just as dialogue, but as manifesto. In the artist’s ongoing exploration of identity, intimacy, and control, this piece captures a moment of self-possession that resists spectacle, despite its direct, carnal framing.

Cushenberry, whose practice blends photography, drawing, and storytelling, continues his signature use of the Polaroid-style border — but here the image bursts beyond nostalgia into a statement of agency. The body, drawn in deep terracotta red and layered with violet shadows, sits against a bed of mauves and lilacs. A cream-colored robe slips from the shoulder. The palette is intentionally rich and assertive, echoing the work of figurative painters like Emma Amos or Henry Taylor, where color and pose are inseparable from meaning.

Executed in Prismacolor, ink, graphite and acrylic, the drawing retains the grain and softness of hand pressure, the textural drag of pigment across paper. The white frame — uneven, brush-marked, physical — reinforces its status as a tangible object, not a digital image. Signed on the reverse, the piece occupies that rare intersection of eroticism and refusal, presence and distance. It speaks in first person, but says more with gesture than with face.

Object: Original drawing on Bristol paper

Title: “Only I Can Set the Pace!”

Artist / Author: Edward Cushenberry

Date: 2023

Technique / Method: Prismacolor pencil, ink, graphite, and acrylic paint

Medium / Materials: Bristol paper

Edition: Unique

Signed: Yes, on reverse

Dimensions: 10.8 × 8.9 cm (4.25 × 3.50 in)

Condition: Excellent, with visible texture, minor smudging and expressive surface variation

Provenance: Darwin Collection