[ART] Métamorphose (Patreon)

Sometimes, when I'm falling asleep at night, my mind starts imagining stuff that is often pretty pedestrian thoughts or it relives some dumbass thing I said a week ago to torture me. Occasionally, it also gives me a glimpse of an image so enticing that I yank my phone out of its charger and quickly sketch the idea in Procreate Pocket and save the image into my private notes Discord server for the next morning. Over time, it's built a well of ideas that I go back to often enough but this sketch is one I made in February and just kinda forgot about. Maybe I got too busy, maybe I got distracted, I don't remember it was February that might as well be 2003.

On Monday of last week, I woke up feeling surprisingly energized and wanted to paint something quick to warmup so I could get to work on some other stuff. I went to the aforementioned well to dig for ideas and used this as a foundation thinking I'd paint it pretty to-the-letter but it quickly turned into something different. I didn't have a strict direction in mind when I started going full bore on it but one definitely developed over time.

We rewatched Ghost in the Shell (1995) in theatres a few weeks ago and any time that happens my art feels the reverberations for a bit, this time with the opening sequence (Making of a Cyborg) drifting in and out of my thoughts.

Not to get too personal with my affairs but I'd been off my (hormone) medication for quite a while for annoying logistical reasons and have been on a constantly-increasing dosage over the past year to get me back to my "equilibrium". In some ways, I feel more like myself than I ever have and that's improved my disposition in ways I'm really thankful for. In some other ways, it's been a bit of an adjustment as some things are changing that really didn't for years prior.

I've never been especially shy about letting my transness or queerness impact my work, I think it's an important part of what my vision is, but I don't feel like I let it take center stage especially often. Which is okay! It's not always my goal. With this, though. I dunno, as I kept painting and refining the subject, I keep thinking about my own body. Forcefully, because I took the dumbest-looking pictures of myself for reference, and because my body is going through a few changes right now and I'm reckoning with that. How I like looking at it, how I still hate looking at other parts of it, how it's being perceived by others. Being back to what feels more like my normal state of mind is also making me so much more... hm. What's a non-horny way of saying this.

I'm appreciating the bodies of trans people around me a lot more. Which is crazy to imagine if you know anything about me. A couple weekends ago, we went to the trans and dyke marches in Vancouver and spent an entire weekend surrounded by what I can only describe as "the most beautiful people on Earth". The indescribable variety that shaped everyone's self filled me with a feeling I deeply missed and felt so much more potent now that my mind wasn't clouded by a muddied, unmedicated baseline.

I thought about all of that working on this, thinking about how much choice I have in my own image while also having to deal with the cards nature deal to me. A lot of it is not up to me, both at birth and what ends up settling when my hormones are done shifting and molding. I have the power to change a lot of these things though ways literal and suggestive. Some of those means are natural, some of them quite mechanical. I'm given near-infinite materials to paint and refine my personal canvas and in the end it'll be uniquely mine. It's what I got to see during pride weekend marches. Thousands who, like me, were given a canvas and I got to see the image they present to the world. Every one of them unique, different, beautiful.

I chose the title "Métamorphose" (Metamorphosis) because, to me, what I'm going through feels more synchronous with that then any other kind of word. Who I was, what I am now, and what I become are steps. It's a process I can't explain the way so much of nature still mystifies me. It's also a process who's imprint is distinctly mine and the form I will take in the end might belong to many groups of labels and descriptors but how I present on my own will always be uniquely me.

There's a few other symbolic things in the art but I think at least a little of it should be up to you to interpret. :)