This painting started as a study of natural texture and scenic images, portraying a film photo of the Lake Superior shoreline I had taken on a trip up north to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in 2021.

As I experimented with photomanipulation on my reference image, layering other distorted film photos and confining them within a black and white image of dead wood texture, I found myself reflecting on my own gender and sexuality.

These themes I chose to highlight further in the finished piece, using bold “gendered” colors and emphasizing the vaginal shape in the center. The finished painting stands as a study of the natural beauty and fluidity of gender that exists as always confined by the decaying structure of societal influence and is “clouded” by bodily autonomy (or lack there of).