Painting with your hands

I know this might sound strange but I've never actually thought of myself as a painter. My natural talents lie in writing and sculpting and whilst I enjoyed painting, I never really thought of myself as talented enough to do it with any real seriousness. I really liked the idea of it, though, so I spent some time experimenting with different sizes of canvas and different surfaces. Of course my canvas shoes have always been a delight to do, but it took quite a bit of testing to determine exactly what sort of canvas I require. I work best on large pieces and generally I stick to the two by three foot canvases. All my Tarot cards have been completed on this size but before I chose that endeavor, I would play around a lot. I have two pieces done with my hands, in an attempt to get a better feel for acrylic and determine what I could do with it.

The first was "Bird Woman", a piece which now hangs in my parents library. My idea with this one was that it could be hung two ways: As a bird or as a flower. Generally it got a bit messy and I was put off by it, but my parents have always loved it. In fact, I recently learned that it's one of my dad's favourite pieces of art.

The second was "For Every Boy..." done on a split canvas. I began with the rainbow, wanting to get away from the smear of colours established in "Bird Woman". At the time I was just beginning work on the creation of the Miscellaneous Youth Network. Someone had given me a poster which was full of phrases like "For every girl who is tired of acting weak when she feels strong, there is a boy tired of appearing strong when he feels vulnerable." I myself was exploring the world of drag and breaking down my personal gender binary definitions. It seemed apt to fill the canvas with these phrases, as well as a few I came up with myself. In hot pink acrylic I painted the first phrase down the entire two canvases. With a silver art pen I wrote more over top, from the red to the yellow. I chose not to fill the entire canvas with the phrases simply because I didn't want to distract people too much from the underlying words written in pink.

Both pieces are of my very first workings with acrylic on canvas and though I feel I've definitely improved, I am actually quite pleased with what I accomplished then. They were the beginnings of me finding my abilities as a painter and I'm extremely happy to have done them.

"Bird Woman" is not for sale but prints are available upon request.

"For Every Boy..." is available for sale.

Please contact me for details on either of these pieces or any other work featured in this Blog.

All work photographed in this Blog is copyright.