I am a portrait artist from Fort St. John, a small oil and gas town. Growing up here as a queer youth and artist, there was never any representation of LGBT people in our out of the art world. The only art you see are landscapes, specifically paintings of our local peace river. With this challenge of representation in mind, I designed the show, Spectrum, to be the depiction of queerness I was missing growing up. This work being a part of the 10 created. The series of 2’ x 3’ portraits are designed to show what people of different genders and sexualities can look like. A viewer may even see themselves in these portrait representations. Indeed, the point is that these representations could be anyone; someone you know, or a stranger, neither changes the fact they still deserve respect.

Each portrait is unique, with its own personality. To help easily distinguish them as individuals, but still maintaining unity, I have made each work the same size, but give each their own bold colored background. I have made the clothes appear flat to emphasize the realism of the portrait. Finally, the works incorporate a 3D element attached directly to the canvas, such as an earring, necklace, hair accessory or all three incorporated to fit the personality of the subjects.