Certainty in Forgiveness

Acrylic and Varnish on Canvas, 30 x 60 x 1.25'in, 2021

Featured at Blackfish Gallery, October 2021

(Sold) Exhibitions with Tala Arts

Description:

This piece is bold in color and symbolism. It was created to invite the viewer to look beyond classic beauty and explore the rich depth both within themselves and the painting. 

The starkness of the blue enhances the gold symbolism, presented in both sharp rectangular lines and an imperfect circle. The artist inquires the viewer to be mindful of the beauty of "imperfection". 

From a distance, everything looks perfect. Once you arrive up close, you begin to see the nuanced movement, empty spaces, and the contrast of the raised imperfect circle against the flat, deep blue, and the sharp, rising and falling, golden lines.

This painting is a reflection on healing from grief as a black queer and trans person who lost their mother during the global pandemic. Just as the gold lines move, the artist's relationship with their mother was just as unsteady.

The center of the painting shows an imperfect raised golden circle, representing completion, movement, imperfection, the continual reincarnation of time and life.

These qualities show up as the whispering ghost in the artist's life to looking exactly like the woman they'd lost and the individual person they were becoming, coming out as transgender many years later.

In death, there is renewal and a joyous reincarnation of the self. The gold represents forgiveness, all the steps in arriving and being in the continual movement of.

Not just for themselves moving into their full expression as BIPOC and Trans, but for the beauty of accepting and being accepted at once.