Janet Mock
This painting features famous transgender writer, Janet Mock. A survivor of sexual abuse, a former sex worker, and now an incredible writer (the book “Redefining Realness” and the show “Pose” on Netflix and FX), Mock is a half-Black, half-Hawaiian woman whose talents, humble beginnings, rough life, brave honesty, and beautiful willingness to heal are just a few of the reasons for why she is such an inspiring figure within the trans community.
From the Streets
In this painting, a Black transgender man opens up his chest like a superhero to reveal a brick wall covered in layers of graffiti that are coming to life and glowing out of him. In this piece, I kept thinking about how our humble beginnings shouldn’t be a source of shame. What we’ve survived and learned are some of our greatest strengths, not things we should feel a need to hide. To love each other and us completely, we must love the things that make us different from each other as much as the things that make us the same.
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy (Unerasure #5)
This painting features Miss Major Griffin-Gracy.
Miss Major was born in Chicago in the 1940s (she is unsure of her exact birth date) she was assigned male at birth. Griffin-Gracy grew up with her parents and her sister, Cookie, and always felt that she was a girl.
As a teenager, she met an older drag queen, named Kitty, who helped her dress up and taught her how to put on makeup.
After coming out, her family rejected her and her sister Cookie even burned pictures of her.
Miss Major graduated from high school when she was 16 years old and enrolled in college but was expelled for wearing dresses.
After being expelled from another college for the same reason, Miss Major moved to New York City in 1962. She made money as a sex worker and considered it to be a profitable and pleasurable line of work.
In New York City, Miss Major got involved with drag shows and started performing as a showgirl.
Miss Major was at the Stonewall Uprising which is often credited as the start of the LGBTQ+ rights movement in the United States. But Miss Major insists that activists were doing this work long before Stonewall, particularly transgender and queer women of color.
In 1970, Miss Major was arrested for robbing one of her customers while working as a sex worker. She was convicted and sent to Sing Sing prison. After several months, she was released on parole. When she wore light makeup to a meeting with her parole officer, he sent her back to prison for breaking her parole, this time to Dannemora prison.
Corrections officers at Dannemora tried to break her spirit. She first lived in the mental hospital of the prison. The officers shaved her hair and eyebrows and even made her walk through the prison naked.
But in this prison, Miss Major met some of the leaders of the 1971 Attica prison uprising who influenced her politicalconsciousness.
After her release from Dannemora, Miss Major returned to working as a drag performer and helped many dragperformers enter the profession, earning her the nickname “Mama Major.” She has also spent her life helping manyrejected LGBTQ youth gain access to homes, education, and other resources.
The spread of HIV/AIDS ravaged the LGBTQ+ community in the 1980s, and religious communities stigmatized the LGBTQ+ community for it, Miss Major began working in HIV prevention and outreach, becoming an advocate and educator with the Tenderloin AIDS Research Center (TARC). She also started street clinics to provide HIV prevention education out in the community.
In 2004, Miss Major joined the TGI Justice Project. It is the only organization in the United States dedicated to assistingtransgender people in prisons. She visits prisons on a bimonthly basis to support incarcerated transgender people and isan advocate for the safety of transgender prisoners, who are at high risk of being a victim of physical or sexual violencewhile incarcerated.
Today, Miss Major lives in Arkansas with her partner Beck, who identifies as a transgender male. Beck gave birth to their child Asiah in 2021.
Reference: Women & The American Story
Multiracial, Intersex Angel
This painting features a Black-Cherokee-White, trans, intersex person with wings made of hands sitting on the rickety fire escape of an affordable apartment in downtown New York. Though angels are often interpreted as religious symbols, in my work they have a personal meaning. After surviving violence that left me feeling dirty and ashamed, I healed in part by drawing angels who were dirty, damaged, or enraged. As an adult, I decided I deserved a painting dedicated torecovery, strength, and dignity. Healing is a journey, not a destination, and I deserve to forgive myself for the things Ididn’t consent to, so that I may learn to love myself.
“[An artist is someone who] is willing to stand emotionally naked before an audience in hopes that your courage will ignite life and healing in someone else.” —Elli Milan, Milan Art Institute
On a Rooftop in Jaisalmer
In many parts of India, trans people comprised a special place within society and the caste system. After the Western colonization forced Indian society to reject and hate gender diversity, trans people in India and coming from traditional Indian backgrounds experience discrimination both from the family and friends, and from Indian society at large in both personal and systemic ways.
Featuring a trans woman on a rooftop in the city of Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India, in this painting I used acrylic spray paint and brushed-on acrylic to evoke the vibrant culture in India, such as Holi (the Festival of Colors), and darkness to imply that trans women in India deserve to come out of hiding and be loved and seen for who they are.
Peaceful
This painting features a middle-aged, fat, genderqueer person who was assigned female at birth staring calmly into a future where all body types are perceived as beautiful because human societies have shed all traditionally shallow beauty standards. The future is a fully inclusive one. I dream of it; I believe in it. I think every person reading this has the power to make it happen.
Remembrance
In this painting, a man clutches the absence of his lover, pulling him close until their foreheads touch so they can share an intimate, powerful moment together, even though he’s gone. Surrounding the couple and visible within the absent lover, is the chaotic colors and stars of a galaxy.
Even when our loved ones are no longer here where we can touch them, so long as we hold them close in our hearts, remember them fondly and often, and act forever as if they are beside us, they are never truly gone. This painting was made in honor of Transgender Day of Remembrance, an annual day on which everyone who cares about transgender people grieves the countless lives lost each year through transphobic violence by reciting the names of the victims aloud at candlelight vigils, refusing to forget them or let their deaths happen without justice, voice, or memorial.
True Colors #7
This painting features a Polynesian, non-binary-ish, transgender man who is letting go of oppressive gender roles by setting free and unleashing his femininity. At the time of this painting, I was struggling to accept my own femininity because I mistakenly saw it as a threat to my masculinity. I was afraid that liking pink, flowers, or feminine clothing could somehow invalidate the fact that I was a man, and at the time of this painting, I was working very hard to find, afford, and make time for my gender affirming care. The doctor my health clinic assigned to oversee my hormones prescription was transphobic and reluctant to allow me a prescription at all. I had to walk on eggshells around her; one wrong word, and she would reduce or freeze my prescription. I didn’t know it at the time, but I am at least somewhat non-binary, and I was too scared to admit this even to myself, for fear I wouldn’t be manly enough to be allowed to be a man at all, even a non-binary one.
True Colors #9
This painting features Ramique, a trans man who I really appreciate allowing me to paint his portrait before top surgery. It was a big ask; we trans guys often don’t even want to be publicly visible until after we’ve completed transition, much less immortalized in a painting. But I believe all levels of transition deserve representation, and that the years of waiting and financial saving that most trans people undergo for each operation we need also deserves acknowledgement. Despite the long wait for necessary care, he was experiencing at the time of this artwork, Ramique was able to radiate untamed joy and pure resilience, and I feel like that is what true strength is made of.
Jeffrey Marsh
Painting Jeffrey wasn’t a whim, but an act of self-care and healing. I needed more trans positivity and non-binary resilience in my life, and I think our joy, beauty, and strength is too often undervalued and underrepresented. There was just something so fun and liberating about Jeffrey singing into a hairbrush; it ignited within me the wonder of how much more magical childhood could have been for many of us non-binary folks if our family and friends had just accepted us and loved us unconditionally.
Personally, I subsist on the hope that things will only ever get better, no matter how many backward steps we are forced to take on our journey forward into a loving future. I imagine a future where all nonbinary children are alive, safe,“normal”, and thus singing euphorically into a hairbrush with their friends. I hope this painting sustains hope and joy in others when things are difficult and uncertain and inspires a gentler perspective about gender-nonconformity in the eyes of those with the privilege of having a binary gender.
Happy, Despite…#2
This painting features a Black transgender woman freely smiling, her smile vibrant and full of beautifully crooked teeth, despite the countless hands replacing the fun, bouncy liberty of her afro. My favorite thing about this woman is that sheworks professionally as a model, and despite everyone encouraging her to “fix” her crooked teeth, she refuses. Instead,she loves them even more. She smiles with her teeth every chance she gets. She uses self-love as a tool for revenge. Is imply love that.
Sweet
Featuring the likeness of Jordan, a trans man with double-incision scars, this painting is vibrant with my love of femininity and is meant to inspire tenderness and cuddles.
Loving
In this painting, a trans woman remains afloat and breathes freely thanks to the unshakable support of those who love her. Each year, dozens of trans women of color are murdered in the U.S., usually by their own sexual partners or the police. I don’t think I will ever understand why so many people in the U.S. react with fear or loathing when they realize awoman is trans, when they could have simply continued to love them, or at least allowed them the right to stay alive.
“I know I should end the poem here, but
I have a right to be saved.”
(Excerpt from Arien’s poem “If the Body is a Metaphor”)
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