Exhibit: Celebration of Our Edges

This exhibit features six to ten artworks, oil on canvas sized 48” x 30”. Each portrait is of a person who is transgender, a sex worker, or an outcast artist. The installation of this exhibition requires nails, to be hung, on a wall. Hanging wire is attached to the back of each painting.

There are those among us who live on the edges of society because we are not welcomed into the center. Those who venture to the center alone are met with ridicule, abuse, and sometimes even death. As an artist, my job is to center and celebrate the voices that many of us do not get to hear from as we move through our small worlds.

This project celebrates the edges that are nearest and dearest to me and those I love. Their images and stories are the gift that I want to share with you. The more the lives of all of us are celebrated the sooner we will all see that we are not separate but actually all the same.

When we bring to the center those who have been journeying on the edges of our society to tell their stories, we become a richer and more whole society. These faces have lived and learned lessons that are the gold we’ve been looking for to transition to a more just and whole community.

Artist Statement
My art is about shining light where our society typically doesn't shine a light. In 2023, in the United States, there are certain people who are lifted up and certain people who are pushed to the fringes. Attributes of someone's identity such as sex, gender, race, ethnicity, profession, sexual orientation, and ability status are contributors to the hierarchy of who is represented and who is not. The hierarchy is invisible to those at the top and life-crushing at the bottom.

There is a story that we all tell each other about who we collectively are, and then there is actual reality. One of my superpowers is feeling in my body when the story we're all believing is out of congruence with the lived reality of people. I feel pain in my body when I sense into the gap.

A personal area of my life that intersects where the dominant narrative pushes people to the edges is sex, sex work, kink, and the more than binary gender of sex assigned at birth. At times my sex life is kinky, my lovers not cishet, my coaching blending the edge of sex work, and my gender more fluid than fixed.

There are those among us who are pushed to the edges because someone, somewhere, at some time, made a decision to amass power by "othering" people.

My work focuses in on that gap and is about lifting up those parts of us that we hide from others. My work is about lifting up those people that we pretend don't exist. It's about normalizing you. Who you really are, what you do behind closed doors, your invisible desires, your hidden kinks. They are not wrong. 

As an artist, who is a widowed, White, middle-aged, attractive, educated, accomplished affluent man, I find myself in a position where I can speak truth to power about sex, gender, and kink with few life-destroying consequences. This is a message that needs sharing, and I am the one to do it.

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