Rhonda, with headress and flames: I made this piece a while ago, over the course of…a year, I think? I had taken a figure drawing workshop in which I completed the original sketch of the model pictured. She had the most interesting expressions when posing, but I wasn’t very good at faces.
I was raised by chefs so I know how to cook, though I don’t show off my knowledge much. I love prosciutto. My favorite restaurant is Taix in Echo Park.
My family. They allowed me to follow my creative passions and I try not to make them think I made a big mistake.
My favorite painting I made is called The Naughty Doppler. It still amazes me every time I see it.
This is my most recent piece. I recently became more open about being queer, and have had a lot of really great conversations with friends about dating and intimacy in the queer community. I also have found that, for myself, my own nervousness and confusion about my sexual orientation, as well as others’ confusion, have fueled some problems in past relationships and in my pursuit of new ones. This piece is meant to kind of represent, from my own personal perspective and experience, the beauty and love of queer connection and intimacy, as well as the difficulty and stress.
I had some left-over sketches of female forms from workshops past, and again decided to use this one to represent a real person. As the body is only a physical house in which we live, I found that painting a person, for me, comes down to the colors and shapes that resonate with them. So while the body is just a random one, these colors represent a childhood friend of mine whom I love with all my heart!
Sandra from Mars is just a painting of a badass alien woman who talks as much and as loudly as she wants to, laughs as brashly unapologetically and obnoxiously as ever, and is the type of being I personally aspire to be.
These two women possess two types of color palettes in people that bring me peace. Also really wanted to capture the beautiful and interesting patterns and shapes of cellulite and rolls and curves and all that greatness!
