Our Bodies As We Are
“our bodies as we are/” | acrylic on 24” x 24” canvas
For a while, I avoided painting. I don’t have a particularly good reason why, but I just felt incredibly avoidant of it all. A mix of creative block & anxiety—though I could argue that those were one and the same.
Back in my high school tv/film club, I was jokingly given the superlative “most likely to scare children” due to the dark topics & style of my films at the time. To be fair, I was super depressed, so it’s not really a surprise. That darkness used to inspire my art. For a while, I was even worried that w/o my mental illnesses, would I have any ideas anymore? Was that what made me interesting? That’s not true, of course, and after 12 years of running on pure depression alone, I’ve burnt out. I no longer feel inspired to create art that is dark and complex, and when I do try, it feels fake and forced.
So I started drawing things around me. Going back to the basics of still life and figure drawings felt like the easiest, thoughtless way to keep making things. But I missed my paints, and waited for inspiration to strike. It simply refused. I had no thoughts and a sickening anxiety any time I even thought about approaching a canvas. Why was I hiding from something I loved doing? I’d gotten so far as covering up old canvases with black paint, but no idea what came next. This black square canvas just sat on my easel for weeks, mocking me. One day, I asked one of my friends to randomly pick a color. They said orange.
I had not painted with orange much and that alone was inspiring. I picked a photo of me where I liked the lighting & painted away. The result was this piece that I quite love. The process once again made me appreciate all the lines, curves, and shadows of my body.
However, if I looked for too long, I would start to get dysphoric…
Sometimes I like my body; I mean I definitely don’t hate it like I used to. A lot of the time, it’s just a body. A vessel to move me place to place. And I mean I take as good care of my body as I do my car (which is to say, I don’t do anything I don’t have to do until I have to). Maybe I should take better care of it… But so often, I feel foreign in this body. A place to stay until I can find something better. So I try to decorate it to make it more my own; adding tattoos and piercings, dying my hair colors; anything to make it mine. And that works for some time! My body is my canvas, and as an artist, I want to utilize the space well; as a person with a body, I wonder if I just need a new canvas altogether.
It’s not that this canvas is bad or wrong; I think my body is beautiful. Just maybe meant for someone else.
But maybe that’s why I paint it so much? To try to appreciate my trans body and celebrate what I already have. To try to see if I can really make this place my home. Do I feel discomfort with my body? Or am I just uncomfortable with the expectations placed upon it.
I don’t know yet, so I will keep painting to remind myself that this is what trans bodies can look like. That sometimes I really might like my chest and my body and it all makes sense for me; not because my assigned gender was correct, but because my fluidity is my gender and I control what that looks like. If I want to change more, I will.
Maybe then, I will see the same beauty in a new form, and it will be my own.
