"Untitled" (i love the way you love)
Graduate Thesis Project, created using Adobe Illustrator, 2024
"Untitled" (i love the way you love), 44" x 62"
"Untitled" (i love the way you love) II, 44" x 53"
"Untitled" (i love the way you love) is a celebration of the queer people in my life who I hold dear to my heart. My primary influence for this series is the quiet and personal work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Like him, I sought to explore and express my queer experience while allowing room for the audience to insert themselves and create their own personal connections with the work. I, along with the subjects of these portraits, recognize the stories behind each image, but the lack of context and recognizable figures is meant to encourage the construction of new narratives. Each moment was first captured in a photograph. I used that photo as reference for a colored pencil sketch that then became the basis for the final drawing in Adobe Illustrator. Instead of working directly from the photograph I decided to draw on paper first so I could take the time to fully reflect on who and what I was rendering. Through that love I hold for each person, this collective of moments ultimately became a self-portrait.
"check your costar"
"always feel free to reach out"
"let me hold your bag so you can eat"
"i still think you're very talented"
"i'm grateful to be here with you"
"you're just fun to hang around"
"it reminded me of what love and friendship could look like"
"serving size is four of these fuckers"
"degenerate the lot of u"
Colored pencil sketches exhibited at the Poe Park Visitor Center, May 2024, Bronx, NY