Gay Pride Month 2015

In honor of June 2015, Gay Pride Month, I’m posting an artwork from the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pictionary.  It is the actual mixed media distressed painting based on the acronym, LGBT.  The painting was finished and signed June 1^st, 2013, and is 24” x 24” square.  I’ve reported on the mixed media distressed technique in the past so I will not go into detail here.  It will be sufficient to say that I work back and forth between photographic images of actual things and people, in some cases historical, in others, images I shoot myself, painted surfaces, and digital images of the work in progress, printed, then torn, sometimes painted over again, photographed again, saved on the computer, worked in Adobe Suite, printed again, torn, painted and so on.

The intent of the series is multiple. 

First, to reclaim words once abusive and instead to make them badges of honor. 

Second, to make a visual record of current terms that denote various populations within the category gay as used on a daily basis in the vernacular. 

Third, to focus on the history of LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer) folk.*

I had an exhibition of the LGBT Pictionary at Camp Rehoboth, Rehoboth Beach, Delaware during Gay Pride Month, 2013.  However, it is an on going project, and I hope to both publish a book of the images and do more exhibitions of the artworks.

* The category “Queer” subsumes all the others including heterosexual persons who identify as positive toward LGBT people, and who actively work toward a society/culture that has become “Queer” tolerant.