Pink Blood-Spangled Shades
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Let’s talk about your girls. The acrylics of the girls appear to be
the focus of your website. Are they your primary interest?
Girls are not my primary interest; they are just easy to get along with. Kids have a purity and singularity that adults lack. My favorite subjects are sparrows and nature in general. Wildlife photography. True beauty is in nature. The humans I paint are what people would be if we evolved from dolphins.
Guns, blood, and sex often accompany the girls. Some would call this shocking. Yet others assert that the potential for transgressive art has been exhausted and that we’re all desensitized. What do you think of this view?
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It's absolutely true. But I don't find my work shocking in any way. Is blood shocking? Life is violent. That's what makes it beautiful. Besides, the society we live in still eats well off the plate "skulls, monkeys, girls, and guns." To present a new trend you'd better serve it in familiar dishware. And humans, being primary apes after all, will still react with more attention if they are shown some toothy smile (an ape's smile is a sign of aggressive behavior). It's fitting that for most people entertainment is about maintaining their comparative balance. Who's above, who's below.
Are your girls in any way a reaction to the fulsome, gun-toting women prevalent in mass fantasy today?
Well, my girls certainly aren't fulsome, or wholesome. They are just healthy and of themselves (not to be confused with "full of themselves"). The woman that serves some undersexed male's stereotypes was always quite boring to me. I always laugh at the whole "sexy woman" thing. To me, the essence of feminism is girliness -- breaking away from the reproductive cycle without appearing to be trying too hard.
So why do you paint? Any agenda? Or just expression?
It is important to understand that in order to change the world, you have to start with yourself. I define my art as new feminism. Unlike feminists of the past, who seem to be preoccupied with victimology -- like the glorification of domestic violence victims -- I prefer to examine the amassing strength that exists in females: the endurance, the grace, the nonchalance of girliness. I don't have to ask society for equal rights or an extra opportunity. I have all the strength and rights that I need.
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I like that your version of feminism focuses on the positive. Playing
devil’s advocate, what if I said that if women’s rights movements
of the past only focused on the positive instead of the attainment of equal
rights, women’s opportunities today would be more limited?
My feminism is positive. End of sentence. I’d also say you're off the mark -- the feminists that influenced female life in America the most were not from the US. Most don't realize what a huge influence communism has had on our life here -- a lot of our female rights and labor rights in general were granted because our government was afraid of the commies having leverage. They had to compromise.
What we had here is very mellow. Even the little girl that shot Andy Warhol -- that's what, the biggest revolutionary achievement of feminism in the US? There were women in Europe fighting for their rights in an actual war. So the equal rights war was won overseas.
The whole equal rights thing just put women into the corporate ladder game.
It lets them prove that they are as good as men. What a silly concept. Why
put yourself up to others? I'm interested in women that run their own lives,
do their own thing, and are not caught up in comparative mindsets. What does
it matter if you're equal to others if you're all slaves with no freedom except
to shop? All the power you need is in front of you. You can change history.
Right now. Whether you're female or male. That's my feminism.