I’ve taken up painting lately, with acrylics. It’s not professional level, but I enjoy it.
I’ve been doing a queer focused painting series right now. It’s hard not to be political in the current climate where being a queer transgender person is met with such furious attacks. I write a lot of this over at https://secondhandoutrage.wordpress.com.
I finished this today, and am calling it Never Forget. The lettering is definitely wobbly. With how much my hands shake, though, I’m happy.
When I was young, in the late 80s to early 90s, I had an awful lot of stickers that said “Silence = Death” with a pink triangle.
They came from the Silence = Death project. Despite starting out in New York, that campaign reached all the way across the country to Bellingham, WA. It was a time when my being a female bodied person, and dating women, was met with violence, and the escalating HIV casualties were in full swing.
Now, the political climate is filled with people that have argued with me that gay marriage fixed the stigmatization of LGBTQ people. It hasn’t. Violence is ever escalating, and I think carrying the old Silence = Death campaign forward to remember all those that came before us is more important than ever. The campaigns and organization that came out of that period helped create the kind of infrastructure needed to win same sex marriage, and now stand in the face of this current unrelenting series of political attacks.
I just wanted to pay homage to that campaign, and those we lost.
The Wolsey Blog 