Divine Intersection
I've mentioned before that it took me a long time to use the title "artist" to describe myself; creating this piece helped. It was the first piece I've ever let leave my little hands and be displayed out in the world!
During COVID lockdown, a local business put out a call-for-artists regarding an LGBTQ showcase on identity. This was at a time where only about 20% of the art I thought about making saw the light of day. I'd been ideating for a long time on a piece that explored my personal conception of what it meant to be nonbinary.
I've often heard people who use terms like nonbinary and genderqueer (my actual preferred term for myself) exist on a continuum of genderless to genderfull. I'm personally deep on the gender-full side of things; I feel outside of both the paramaters of man and woman, but somehow constrained by each as well.
Divine Intersection is an attempt to create a sort of abstracted self-portrait and explore how masculine and feminine energy work together within me. I used puffy paint to look like solder or stained glass, so even the two smaller pieces meant to depict divine masculine and feminine energy seem "manufactured". In the balance between, my personal truth, there is beauty and something more natural.
Did I understand perspective? No. Did I know how to use a paintbrush effectively? Also no. Did I even understand myself? like sorta, you know, as much as anyone else does I guess. . .
This piece was imperfect, but it was real and finished and mine. It was me, in a lot of ways. Seeing it in the case with a bunch of other incredible and raw pieces of art shifted something in myself. I was proud of my imperfect piece. I could grow to be proud of my imperfect self.
Six years later, I'm getting there. It all takes the time it takes.