Artist Statement: Studio Practice
Imagery for my paintings are dug up from both early and recent memories, and are often inside jokes with my own personal experiences. A deep childhood (and current!) love for fish and bugs resulted in a rising population of half-mutated fish/bug/twisty creature people in my paintings. This way of depicting myself/my body started as a humorous approach to talking about my own experience with “gender envy” and being gender-nonconforming but has since become more earnest. A pure adolescent love for sea animals, I would read children’s encyclopedias about insects I used to collect as a kid has also manifested itself into a deep longing for my body to transform into these alien-like hybrid creatures arguably free from gender perception or societal and anatomical constraints. We often project ourselves onto mammals such as dogs or cats, almost anthropomorphizing them to an extent. However, fish and bugs are relatively more unrelatable and less human-like in nature, but still seen as living things. I think that’s what I yearn for: to be seen as just a living, breathing creature with nothing else projected onto me. As a trans bi-racial person, I have always been hyperaware of how I take up space, especially living in the Midwest my whole life. I think I yearn to be free from the fear of perception and just be.
