This series of drawings began by creating references through an AI image generator; overloading the prompt box with phrases and descriptions of queer intimacy. Gay hand hold, holding, queer kiss, lesbian, bodies pressed against one another, fat grab, fisting, fingers interlaced, etc. Each image is made from at least forty different prompts I and other queer folks I spoke with, find important in our experienced intimacy.
What I find fascinating about AI image generation at this point in its evolution is that regardless of how much information a program has, its renderings of the human body will inevitably be “queered.” AI-generated images confront realism: parallel to the norm yet other, appealing and disturbing. These "double-queer" bodies represent a reclamation, not just of the images that were stolen from the queer people and sex workers who created them but of what is deemed acceptable within western art historical figuration. Queer bodies have consistently been hidden and demonized with figurative rendering. Implementing Western techniques of l’École style rendering to depict these images pushes the viewer to confront what has been hegemonically taught as worthy of documenting.
Bodies are grotesque and beautiful: perfectly errored. The word “error” comes from an old English word meaning “to stray”. Queerness and the pursuit of rendering queer intimacy has taught me to be unafraid to stray, that our bodily experience is ever expanding: beautiful errors to be multiplied infinitely.
Work Descriptions:
Lituus 2025 graphite and toned marble dust gesso on panel 24”x36”x2”
Inosculation 2025 graphite and toned marble dust gesso on panel 12”x6”x2”
Epiphyte 2025 graphite and toned marble dust gesso on panel 16”x16”x2”
Hold,Hold,Held 2025 graphite and toned marble dust gesso on panel 16”x16”x2”
Swell 2025 graphite and toned marble dust gesso on panel 8”x8”x2” Dip 2025 graphite and toned marble dust gesso on panel 8”x8”x2”