The emotional punchline

Here's a post I've been working on in bits and pieces over the past few weeks of being sick. I'm looking forward to rescheduling yesterday's live class that I had to cancel, hopefully in the next week or two when I am recovered a bit more. I will keep you posted! -b.

Last year, I started working with a team of researchers who have been studying how trans and non-binary people heal from parental harm. Their core finding rings so true: being queer isn’t something that puts us at risk for parental harm, but it can actually help protect us against that trauma.

Parental harm doesn’t just appear out of nowhere when a kid comes out — it’s usually a continuation of patterns that are already in place. Trans and non-binary people may be the first ones in their family to really recognize this harm for what it is, and they may even get to safety and learn new ways of relating before their non-queer counterparts, who perhaps experience less rejection and end up lingering in the tangle of abusive family systems for longer. Thinking of it this way shifted how I see my whole life. Going first was hard, but waking up to this life now, that is mine, that is so full of good love — that is so sweet.

I spent months brainstorming ways to illustrate this idea along with a few others that will all be part of a zine they are making that will share their findings with the community. I knew their writing would translate all the important concepts, so I felt that the role of my art was to carry the emotional punchlines of the study that had moved me so much.

My first sketch for this idea of rejection and freedom was a venn diagram, but it didn't really make sense, so I had the idea of separating the two shapes and making them into mirror images. I liked this immediately, because this idea of rejection and freedom being each other's reflection felt powerful. I liked framing them as equal and opposite, and almost interchangeable until you looked more carefully.

Once research team approved this concept, I realized I could make it like a rorschach test instead of painting two identical shapes. I love drawing on pre-existing diagrammatic concepts, and this was perfect, because the rejection and the freedom are both in the eye of the beholder. The piece would go from making a statement about them being opposing forces, to asking the viewer:

what do you see?

rejection? or, freedom?

I began experimenting with materials. I tried so many different papers, inks, and watercolors and got a wide range of textures and shapes.