Queerity
Queerness. I have so many lenses of relationship to this word, this identity. I take the cultural meaning and add my own layers, complexities. It richly describes me, and I also do not cling to it. Lately, I have been leaving my transness out of bios and applications, because my art work is not per se directly about queer experience ….
my work is about shared experience.
My work is about the deep underpinnings of what it means to be human. Nevertheless, one cannot just cut the queer out of me and have a fully formed idea of who I am. From an early age, I knew there was something different about me. I could tell by how I was treated, by the friends I made, by my feralness, by my refusal to go along with social norms … despite the cost. I was ostracized in my pentacostal grade school for refusing to wear dresses. I have been habitually nude since I can remember. I have remained close to nature. I was disinterested in sex until I lost my virginity, then I had sex with everyone. I never came out because it never occurred to me to hide that I was pansexual and polyamorous (although I did not have those words when I was 15).
My gender identity is trans-agender, or non-binary. Agender feels more correct, since I love and cherish binaries so much. Binaries are incredibly useful concepts, as long as we are recalling that no binary is a paradox, all of them are spectrums. Either way, this language is a vast improvement from the many years I called myself an alien or a fucking freak. There was a lack of self-love that I had to resolve. I’ve written about this process a bit in the essay, Genderfuck: origin story; and STAR KIND.
I am queer in other ways than sexuality and gender identity: my minimalism in the face of consumer capitalism, my adrenaline-driven adventure streak, my fondness for creepy-crawlies and compost, my lack of need for external validation, my profound dedication to art creation, my devotion to my invented spirituality, my abilities as a healer, the questions that I midwife into the world.
Queerness in my Art
While I wouldn’t say that queerness is the focus of my art, it is always present because I am ever-present. This painting, “Parent, Child, Crone,” is a riff off of the classical archetype, Mother, Maiden Crone, as third-gendered characters. A typical viewer might pass by and never notice the queerness here. Others will be attuned to the hidden genitals in a way that is not associated with Christian Puritanism … they will know it is for safety. Some will notice the broad shoulders, the big hands.
This painting is five feet by six and hangs in the permanent collection of The Glo Center in Springfield, MO. It was created during a two-month gallery show where several artists painted live while the gallery was open. Paintings went from blank to complete over that time frame. This particular painting definitely came to me directly from the source and I’m forever happy that it has a good home in a queer safe-haven.
Likewise, if you look over the paintings in the small gods of animals book, you will notice the mixed genital presentation of many of the characters. This is not really intentional as much as it is just what I know. Gender is and has always been fluid to me, no one could ever convince me otherwise because I’ve known it in my body. Science has come to support my intuition in recent years as understandings about what gender means have come under more in-depth, less white-patriarchal, lenses of study and reporting.
Western culture is coming to include queerness more readily into the fold. I have mixed feelings about this. Historically, the queer folk I know have been anti-capitalist, anarchist, and dedicated to justice and healing. It’s good to be visible, it’s bad to be homogenized.