Mitchell's Fetish Art for October

A group of hunky swimmers, are loaded into tall glass tanks full of 'preserving' liquid.

It's a useful storage and display technique for the avid collector of speci-men.

Coincidentally, an interesting way to infuse olive oil with intriguing flavours.

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When I first drew this picture (around the time of the 2008 Financial Crisis), I was imagining a group of Financial Advisers who had all been invited to a drinks party by a rich investor, not suspecting that he was most unhappy about losing large sums of his money with them. When they see his opulent mansion and gather round the luxurious Swimming Pool, their envy and greed is ignited and they imagine generous commissions coming their way. After a few drinks they loose all their inhibitions. He provides them all with identical swimming trunks so they can splash around in the pool and lay out to enjoy the warm sun. The investor observes their nakedness with great pleasure, a small compensation for his loss. 

The greedy ones are soon fast asleep. Those who are more circumspect or reserved are given spiked drinks to help them on their way. The trusty gardener arrives with a supply of plastic plant ties, which put the Banker's fates beyond doubt. Those still clothed are stripped and put into swimming trunks. Any that regain consciousness are too intoxicated to escape, easily overpowered and immobilised. They and their unconscious cohorts are loaded into a van and taken to the investor's pickle factory to be preserved for a later date. Their clothes and belongings are burned in the garden incinerator. 

But some escape, those young men whose behaviour at the party has persuaded the investor to spare them and those whose unclothed bodies proved even less attractive than their personalities. These few awake with hangovers to find their colleagues already gone. They are revived and sent on their way completely unaware of what has happened. As the last one departs, the investor locks up the house behind them and the gardener retrieves the 'For Rent' sign from the bushes and puts it up again. They drive away in the unmarked van eager to begin cataloguing their new acquisitions. The investor is now happy with the return on his original investment.

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I'm always intrigued by Sci-Fi stories in which the hero is 'imprisoned' in a glass cylinder for observation and experimentation purposes (e.g. Nath66 - Sperm Lab). Like most cage situations however, the glass barrier inhibits erotic connection. Horror stories depicting rows of jars with preserved organs conjure up the possible gruesome extremes of this scenario.

My image probably owes more to the Bound Gods, water tank tortures with the delicious Rusty Stevens and Dante for example. The liquid in the tank makes an eerie substitute for the captor's touch. It swirls round their bodies, invading their clothing and crevices, and of course, providing an element of danger to the captive who, being tied up, has limited capacity to save himself.

The imagery of underwater bondage goes back even further for me, with these famous pictures from the late sixties, showing US Navy Seals undergoing survival training. They group are all put into a swimming pool with their hands and feet bound together. I didn't consciously copy this but the connection is obvious, the 'buddy' situation as well as the immersion motif. 

These images were originally published in ordinary, Newspaper Weekend Supplements

 and included some nice  'tying up' images of the the soldiers being prepared for their ordeal.  

Colleagues already 'processed' look on with a mixture of anxiety and bravado.