A spark ignited... nay, a sequin

PDot here.  I find myself rejuvenated, motivated and inspired after the first ART CLASSless in October... so much so that I dug out (and dusted off) my portfolio bag to browse some of the water colours I had done years ago... in high school.  When I was a teenager.  And struggling to come to terms with my love of peen. 

But, if you look at my source material, there was no question I was a friend of Dorothy's, a Mary, a homo.

From a photo shoot by the brilliant Steven Meisel, around the time Truth or Dare was about to be released.

Cover shot from the April 1991 Vanity Fair by Steven Meisel with Madonna paying homage to Marilyn Monroe (faaaaar better than Lindsay Lohan could ever do).

Photo from 1991 by Steven Meisel.  The body suit in my version is made of actual magazine clippings on Madonna. 

Janet's iconic Rolling Stone magazine cover (and janet album cover) shot in 1993 by the legendary Patrick Demarchelier.

Back then, I refused to really acknowledge it.  Like date-a-girl, take-her-to-prom, refusal. I painted these water colours (and others) after hours in high school, locked away in my art class (thanks to my encouraging art teacher by the name of Mr. Brown who taught me art every year of HS), free from judgemental stares - or worse - horrible name calling, just to get lost in the paint, the colour and the music I'd listen to while painting.  Don't get me wrong - I had friends and was social.  But I was most at peace with myself with a paint brush in one hand and paint in the other (or a book, but that's another story).

I'm drawn to art - always have been - and love creating.  I think it's an extension of one's being.  And it wasn't until recently - the ART CLASSless in October we posted about recently - that I thought of these paintings again, and how they made me feel when I painted them - ALIVE and FREE!  If anybody knows me now, they'll know that I'm a colourful guy and that my personality is sometimes larger than some can handle (or even understand) - and this was the safest expression of that big, colourful personality at the time, particularly living in a small town.  That's why the colours in my paintings are so exaggerated, I think.

Now, I can rock bright blue pants, a neon green watch and diamond-elle studs (biatch be on a budget) in my ears.  In daylight.  And even in my home town, when I visit.  With no shame (should be no shame in what you do).  You could say that art was the impetus I needed to become comfortable in my own skin.  And it was the rest of my iG boys, who totes get me, that ignited the spark - I mean unleashed the sequins - once again!