new artist statment

so i just spent the last two hours doing lgbt 101 for a couple of campus English classes with one of my friends from wingspan....and the nice thing about this is that usually when i do something like this, i generally have a lot to think about and write about after it's over. today was no exception to that. i've been struggling to write an artist statement for my work since last semester, and i kept stumbling around it all. i did a very bare bones one at the beginning of the semster, and it has helped to solidify what issues i wanted to bring to the table about my art. so between yesterday and today's panels, i finally found a place to speak from, and i thought i would share it.

Leonard Cohen once wrote: “The body I chased, it chased me as well.” He was speaking about love when he wrote this , but I find it to be a thought that is easily applicable to my life and my art.

As a transsexual man, I am constantly chasing and reaching this idea of body over and over again. With each step into transition, I reach a new level of body that I am comfortable with and simultaneously reach for the next level of comfort in the space that I occupy.

I am also chased by my choices in persuit of my own understanding and realization of myself. I chase and am chased by a lack of communication with my parents and family. I chase and am chased by the decision to reveal (or not) myself to others. I chase and am chased by intimacy (or a lack thereof). I chase and am chased by responsibility, to the lgbt community, to activism, to family, to me.

And in my artistic life, I chase expression. I want people to get a glimpse at what it means to live a transgendered life in a society where that isn’t embraced. I want people to begin to understand how gender, sex, and difference function in my life and maybe then in their own. I want to be voice in the chorus of voices that have always been and are now beginning to break through to the mainstream. I don’t want my work to be about talk show mentality or voyeurism. I want to share my life and share what it means to be human as I understand it.

It can be about paint, or photographs, or performance, or subversive acts. It is all one in the same. The work comes from daily experience and activism. It comes from a need to share and be - in the best and most honest way I know how – a man. It comes from my daily chasing of life.