The ongoing body of work, and the first day of my installation Hello World in the McNay exhibition Transamerica
Each painting in this series, Diary of a Trans Woman, is created and live-streamed from inside the exhibition space. Over the course of 3 – 8-hour sessions, I paint exactly what I see in the mirror. There are no foundational lines or underlying structure to reign me in. Features will stretch and distort, noses will lengthen, cheekbones will show prominently, and my visage will differ every time.
I paint as honestly as I am capable of. These paintings capture not only what I was looking at in the mirror, but are also imbued with what I was feeling that day.
There is a potential for failure with each of these paintings. If I do not capture the essence of that reflection in the first couple of hours during this process, I stop that painting and move on to the next.
Regardless of what I accomplish, finished or not, the painting will go on the wall.
I started to paint this body of work, of my own volition, outside the exhibition.
Well into this, I started to record and stream my painting sessions in their entirety. I was exposing myself and my studio to the outside world.
This is my first live stream from in the museum, inside the gallery space itself. The ability to paint in this space, live, in front of an active audience, and in the presence of other masterful works of art, was a huge honor and a responsibility I took very seriously.
This is my self-portrait oil painting number 20 in my series, Diary of a Trans Woman.
From my installation Hello World at the McNay Museum of Modern Art as part of the exhibition Transamerica: Gender, Identity, Appearance Today during the Summer of 2019.