Dancing Free, 2023
Acrylic Paint on Canvas
12 x 9 in
I am a Bay Area local gender queer disabled painter whose disability affects both the way I paint and the people I choose to celebrate. In a society that is actively harming our queer and disabled communities while trying to tear us apart, my art challenges discriminatory views by celebrating us as we are.
Queerness is central to my art, as an exploration of non-normative ways of living. The unedited sexuality in my work confronts the way society desexualizes and infantilizes disabled people. My art celebrates disabled queer sexuality as uniquely desirable, access needs and all.
The genders of the characters in my art are intentionally obscured. I paint trans, non-binary, genderqueer, and cis bodies in a way that blurs the lines between those categories. In this way my paintings deconstruct our assumptions about gender and sexuality, instead showing a variety of bodies and souls connecting.
I believe that a beautiful soul is someone who is free to be wholly themselves. I hope when others look at my art they get to experience that beauty of seeing someone embody who they are, regardless of what society assumes them to be.