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Serving the Fetish World |
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As a contributing artist to Desmodus Publishing and Brush Creek Media he was known as Brad Rader. For a long time, his art was signed and credited as “Raider,” but he slowly came around to signing Rader or Brad Rader. He was asked to participate in Gavin Geoffrey Dillard’s infamous erotic art reception and sale in 1990, in Los Angeles. He had been very bus and forgot the show was coming up soon. The day before the show, Gavin called up and told Brad, “as soon as you get here with your pictures I can hag the show”. Brad freaked out. Not only did he have no art to bring, he had no paper or canvas on which to put art… and no time, either. So, he flattened out two paper grocery bags and did quick, pallet-knife paintings of a couple of Desmodus pictures. Joseph Bean bought one of them at the show and Tony DeBlase purchased the other. We now have both, as well as a few others in the permanent collection at the Leather Archives & Museum.
The book collects erotic drawings and comics culled from over 20 years of sketches, some of them made before Rader had even lost his virginity. In the forward to TAF, Rader writes how for much of his life these jerk-off sketchbooks were the focus of his sexuality: “I made love to them [the men] by drawing them.” This passion comes through in the drawings, which replace the sterile, bland clichés of most gay erotic art with images clearly significant to the artist, and therefore infinitely more interesting for the reader. For example, variations on a particular person come up over and over… a middle-aged, balding man with deep vertical furrows in his cheeks, a cleft chin, and a thick, hairy body. Where did Rader’s prototype come from? Are these drawings based on a real man, or a fantastical composite? There is meaning for the creator here, which the reader can play with in his own mind and fantasies. |
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Brad's published works include “True Adult Fantasy”, clearly a labor of love. Brad Rader is an accomplished illustrator, having worked professionally for many years in comic books, animation, and gay publications… this book is perhaps not his best work from a purely artistic point of view, but it is filled with a wonderful, fascinating intensity that can only come out of a project close to the heart of a creator.
