Summer Project: “Sea Foam”

Sea Foam (38.5cmx29.5cm, acrylic paint and coloured pencil on card)

For our summer project we were asked to create a piece of art influenced by an essay that aligns with our own practice. I chose the essay “Simplicity Craving” by Ariel Goldberg , which explores the question of what it means to be a queer artist and how far our queerness influences the analysis and perception of the art we make. They argue that the works of queer artists are automatically given the ultimately meaningless label “queer art” that only acts to segregate and restrain queer artists and their work. Goldberg puts into words a feeling that I have always found impossible to place: that as a queer person, it really feels like you can’t escape your identity, and everything you make becomes defined by it. One of the exhibitions Goldberg discusses (Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture) featured the painting “Men Reading” by J.C Leyendecker. I was struck by how subtle the queer undertones of the painting are. On first glance, it simply seems to portray two traditionally masculine men sitting apart from each other...reading. Only with the context of the artist’s own sexuality do you begin to see the potential tension between the two men. As the painting was completed in 1914 when being queer was a crime, this subtlety was vital. However, it made me consider the way queerness is often impossible to hide. I was 10 the first time I remember someone calling me “gay” on the playground. My mum says she knew it since I was a toddler always playing dolls and dress-up. As a teenager I struggled immensely with labels and self-discovery all while having the word “gay” thrown at me at least ten times a day. Then on a trip to the beach with my boyfriend, I got hate-crimed for the first time. We were sitting apart, he was asleep while I had my head buried in a book. But still, our queerness was evident. This inspired me to create the painting above, “Sea Foam.”

“A Spanish Breakfast” (30.5cm x 22.5cm, oil on canvas board)

Having explored the anxiety that comes with being in public spaces as a queer couple in “Sea Foam,” I wanted to make a companion piece that showed the peace of being able to love freely and without care in private. This piece features my boyfriend, yet again, sitting on the patio of his house in Marbella, high up on the mountains away from the world. Whilst the last piece positions the viewer as an outsider watching us as we sit on the beach, exposed to judgement, this piece instead puts the viewer in my place. This adds a layer of intimacy as we gaze tenderly into each other’s eyes. I was incredibly moved by COB Gallery’s, “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with two figures),” a group exhibition featuring 9 male artists who each navigate ideas of intimacy, queerness, masculinity and vulnerability. The use of the interior as an expression of the male psyche, inspired by David Hockney’s Domestic Scenes series, particularly influenced me in the theme of this painting.