Impersonator
I started wearing makeup to high school in the late 1990s. One thing I have heard consistently since then was that I was hiding behind a mask. A mask of one's own making must surely express the inner depths. Glamour drags a lot to the surface. A made up face is a true face.
I was interested in painting Madonna impersonator portraits for several reasons. I like the idea of painting a painted /made up face. The thin film-like mask
makeup is magic. I’m interested in Madonna as a gay icon but also as an appropriator of culture. Someone who is a sort of impersonator herself. I don’t think of myself as a painter. I am impersonating a painter with these works. Madonna’s name sake places the work in to the spiritual realm of goddess worship.
I started with working from an image of a Madonna impersonator on a VHS box from 1991 called Female Impersonators. I then began working from images of Madonna at different points in her career. It occurred to me to work with images from the vhs on my TV screen. I fell in love with the glow and interlaced blur of the vhs. I really wanted to keep that in mind while painting.
I didn’t intend the work to be super political, however recent legislation banning drag- “Male/ female Impersonators” has invited Impersonators into a messy psychosexual drama with cis-conservatives that wish to regulate trans bodies and identities, while banning gender variance for children.