Update, 16 August 2020:
Though self taught, I've been making art my entire life. In particular, I've been making a lot of art during our Covid lock down. Not just these faces-- I've been reclaiming toys and studying flowers, sewing costumes, dabbling in plein aire, etc. But nothing is closer to my heart than these images. Mostly in watercolor, primarily because it's difficult, and therefore requires maximum attention. Also it requires a certain commitment or resolve; after many years of delay, I feel like my skills are finally getting stronger with excercise.
For me the current averted media glances around trans lives and rights, during these times of rampant bad news, and especially in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder, strike a very real, yet very hidden chord. If we actually are remembering the names, if we are all 'woke' with a general realization of hidden systemic inequity and internalized priveledge (in my case)-- up to and including a collective realization of our own endemic and internalized racism, acknowledged at least to some extent finally-- yet here are people ignored beause they're not 'real'; not only in the media, but by society writ large. Black Lives Matter; but not only that, Black Trans Lives Matter.
I think I recognize the weirdness here, a priveleged white guy documenting trans POC victims through Homage. Who am I to do this-- only a comfortably situated middle aged gay man who grew up in a repressive homophobic culture that forever imprinted me with a visceral sense of what it's like to be excluded, erased, and cancelled out. In the 1980's being homosexual in the south was literally unspeakable-- I am convinced to this day that most people preferred me disappeared rather than visible and gay. Nobody who hasn't experienced this can quite conceive it, or so it seems. Nowadays, during a new and terrifying pandemic, people are arguing about whether or not they have the right to wear masks in public, yet nobody seems very interested in creating solidarity with a sexual minority who are daily being punished simply for being who they are. What about their right to dignity, or simple acceptance? What about their right to not be invisible, or erased?
I have here a series of paintings featuring trans women and men, primarily of color, murdered amid silence at the hands of monsters created with the consent of a larger culture that refuses to acknowledge a stunning inequity regarding the question of whose lives matter. With a few exceptions, nobody anywhere is very interested in standing up for trans rights. In 2020 alone already 26+ trans people, mostly POC, have died violently in the USA, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Most murders have yet to be solved. Brian Epstein gets more publicity than all of these crimes put together, yet nobody seems to notice. Much like it was for me growing up in the southern US in the 1980's.
And so I paint them, one at a time. What comes up for me when I paint their faces? What can they possibly teach me now? While we've never met and I can only imagine their brief lives, through an internet photo used as a reference I can at least paint a shard of their humanity, and in this way give some acknowledgement that they existed, that they mattered. They had names too.
Art has kept me sane in a cruel world my entire life. Same as it ever was.
Sincerely, Whoretense
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