Artist accuses police of being 'transfixed by childhood sexuality'

A world famous artist has criticised police for being "transfixed by childhood sexuality" after he was taken to court accused of being a paedophile. The case against Graham Ovenden, 67, whose work has been displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Tate and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, was thrown out by a judge last week. His portraits are mostly a mixture of paintings and photographic images of naked pre-pubescent girls which he creates on a computer at his £1.3 million Gothic home.

But following a police raid on his studio he was charged with 16 counts of making indecent images and one of possessing an indecent image of a child. Speaking after the hearing Ovenden, of Bodmin, Cornwall, defended his work and accused the police of being ''transfixed by childhood sexuality''. He said: ''Don't forget we are all born into this world naked and we leave nothing behind but the things we produce.



''A lot has been made of my young nudes work. But it is really a small part of my output. I have a large and varied collection of important work. If you had asked people at the time if it was pornographic they would have laughed at you. It seems to me that police are totally and utterly transfixed by childhood sexuality.

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''I suppose some of my work is shocking. What I am painting and what I am taking pictures of is shocking but I have no interest in what people say about me. I have a lot of very loyal supporters. Likewise, there are a lot of people who think I am the most outrageous pervert. I don't have a live television, I don't have the internet, a car or a mobile telephone. I think that makes me a pretty poor example of a paedophile.''

Ovenden denied all charges before the case was thrown out, and said he had hoped a full trial would reveal the nature of his work and clear his name. He said: ''Common sense would say to you that an image of a child nude is simply a beautiful image. The pornography is in the eye of a person looking at it should they feel that way. It is not in the eye of the creator - not this creator, anyway.''