About

BFA Thesis (2021)

Drawing and painting provide me with an outlet to explore my identity and process my emotions when I can’t find words. I am interested in portraiture because it can reveal things about the sitter depending on their expression, pose, environment, and lighting. I originally started doing self-portraits because I was a readily available model. Over time, my interest in self-portraiture has expanded to uncovering and understanding who I am. I stayed closeted out of fear and denial for most of my life, and I did not come out fully as queer and non-binary until this past year. The ambiguous nature of my work reflects the feelings of confusion and shame surrounding my identity. The pieces display my uneasiness with the state of myself through visual metaphors and surreal environments. I mostly use figure-ground compositions but some of my pieces place figures in a physical space. These environments reflect interior spaces, but they do not align with how one would experience them in the physical world. A figure with glowing eyes and features that echo anatomical structures appears multiple times in my paintings. This character acts as a personification and visual metaphor of my gender dysphoria. My other paintings and drawings consist of contorted and exaggerated self-portraits concealing and exposing oneself.