I am an artist interested in shame, taboo, and the divinity of freaks. This manifests differently in the disciplines I move between. I gave up the EDM career I spent most of my life building to begin my gender transition, and returned to music production as an honest but far less socially acceptable version of myself. My photography book "i want to rest and be held by someone who loves me" was a eulogy for the first 30 years of my life, memorializing the shame and self-destruction required to live inauthentically. In my introduction to visual art - my teenage years doing graffiti in San Francisco - I first tasted the liberation of coloring outside the lines. Today, I invite shame and taboo in as dear friends, transmuting them into spiritual freedom..
My work explores this process of transmutation through a multi-year series of self-portraits. My body takes center stage, either warped into unnatural creatures or placed into surrealistic context where both the divine and the demonic may shine. The harsh reality of existing in my trans body is set loose into a time and place that does not exist, where moments of embarrassment, discomfort, joy, or pleasure can expand infinitely.
Though frequently nude, my body is not presented in line with trans fetishization or conversely, to show how "well" I have transitioned to a binary standard (often a measure of value). The viewer is invited into my own, ever-changing self-image, and left with the question of how they relate.
I use the techniques I learned as a teenage graffiti artist as the foundation of my work, beginning with messy spraypaint and bold lines. I slowly incorporate more traditional painting techniques that I have taught myself over the years to create both realistic and surrealistic works with a blend of acrylic paints, texture mediums, and oils. Dancing between the polarities of street art and figurative oil painting, the contrast creates a liminal space for my body to live in.
I have begun additionally to explore questions of masculinity, anonymity, desire, and the violence of the state. My current works in progress and planned pieces also include works of text, short video projects, and 3D works.