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Over the past four years I have developed a sort of hobby or ritual of
creating visual personas of original drag queens. Such as hobbies are,
they are detached side projects and did not filter into my formal art
practice until this past year. Questions about my intentions of trying
to be a man impersonating a woman surfaced, and confusion and misunderstandings
about the act of faux drag began to pile up. My current practice is to dissect
this part of my identity, and how it interacts with other people's views.
My obsessions with makeup, fashion, and transformation are what directly feed
into my interest with drag. I have always been inspired by the sciences: psychology,
forensics, and medicine. The analytical nature of those subjects highly informs my own
practice. Meticulous and repetitive work, careful observation, and numerous questions
are characteristic of my process.
I feel it is important to incorporate myself into my work at this point in my artistic path.
This body of work often contains the use of myself, such as my clothing, or makeup, or image.
I question my obsessions, analyze my habit of collecting, and what the transformation into
drag means to me. With that grounding, I also explore the outsider's perspective, what the
illusion suggests to other people, focusing on gender identity, with special attention to
the traditional female gender role.
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