Published on Saturday, February 6, 2021 by Agitator Co-operative

Paintings About Gender Identity, Stigma, and Self-Assertion

by Andrea Kaspryk, Agitator member

Preface

What are your ideas and intentions in your paintings? What do they symbolize and mean to you? What do you hope viewers will take from them? These are the questions that I will answer about a series of my recent symbolic, narrative oil paintings whose theme focuses on gender. 

That said, I do welcome other interpretations of my work. By no means do I see myself as the main or authoritative source of meaning for my visual imagery. Indeed, I recognize that cultural, historical and mythical symbols have multiple meanings, so they may likely form different ideas in viewers, which are as valid and valuable, if not more so, than my own. 

I also recognize that creating art involves the unconscious, so an artist may not be fully aware of their intentions in assembling and presenting visual images. And after completing a painting, a painter may develop more insight into the motives and inspiration for a painting. In fact, for me, in several cases, the end result, the finished painting, surprises me with the unexpected changes in design or color or emphasis that occur and seemed called for while working on it. As a result, the painting may become quite different than the sketch on which it is based. And though the changes made in such a painting may run counter to my initial intentions and design, I will go with the flow, setting aside or modifying my original plan for such a painting in order to make it compositionally and/or thematically a more effective and/or original work of art. While undertaking changes poses some risks in a painting, since they can ruin it and compel one to start over, they do seem worthwhile to me. 

Getting Started with a Flag Image

After graduating from art school in 2013 with a bachelor of fine arts degree (BFA) in painting and drawing, I have hoped to make a series of interconnected paintings about transgender subject matter, but I have instead ended up making individual drawings, prints and paintings about this theme, not managing to figure out how to successfully create a series. But in 2020 I succeeded in my plan to make such a series, whose point of departure initially seemed to be yet one more one-off project: a painting of a modified symbolic flag combining transgender, LGBTQ+ and anarchist elements flag for a show in June 2019. I sketched out and painted in acrylic one such design on a recycled political campaign sign. Getting a late start on my flag, and busy with other demands, I only managed to complete it after the show.

Still, I was eager to follow through on my project and redo it on a larger scale and on canvas, so I outlined a larger, more elaborate and ambitious alternative transgender anarchist flag design on canvas. Yet I realized as I was close to finishing the outline and on the verge of applying paint to it that I did not feel personally invested in this project. Oh, no, I thought to myself, Is this yet another dead-end painting project that is not going to work out?! I asked myself, What would I really like to do? Introduce a small transgender figure into the flag, was my answer, but when I started to do so, this turned out to look awkward. So, I gave up on the transgender anarchist flag idea, but I decided to make a new painting with a large scale transgender figure in the center of the composition (and I kept one element from my transgender flag design—the snake). 

Initially, I considered the transgender figure could hold a Rod of Asclepius, which has become a well-known symbol of healing (a snake wound around a staff), but I thought this came across as too predictable. (I did pursue this idea in a large drawing, and the drawing seemed to have some promise, so I started to make an oil painting based on it, but it did not prove effective, so I aborted it.) At some point, the idea of a person holding a poisonous and dangerous snake, but not fearing it came to my mind, and this idea led me to start the first painting in my transgender series that I named Facing Stigma.  

As I worked on this painting, the notion came to my mind that it could serve as the starting point for a series of paintings. In a second painting, a matching figure in the same squatting pose would face backwards, which I called The Lonely Anarchist, and this figure could hold an anarchist flag. Thus, my initial starting point for this series, the flag image found its way back into it. While I was working on these two paintings, the idea of adding a third painting, Unease in Balancing Gender, came to mind to show a figure in a different and more dynamic pose and in an imaginary scene seated atop a giant snarling mask; this painting  would have more elements to it as opposed to a stark and simple background of the other two paintings. In the painting Unease in Balancing Gender, I relied on a previous image I had already painted years ago in art school: a small egg tempera painting of a figure seated with soles of their feet touching one another with their legs forming a diamond shape (a bhadrasana, that is, a gracious or cobbler’s pose in yoga) and holding a ball overhead with a yin and yang design on it. In the egg tempera painting this figure sits above tree roots shown in cross section, but in the oil painting I changed this element to large, scary mask.

Facing Stigma

For the painting Facing Stigma I took delayed release photos of myself to serve as the nude figure model. One notable influence I should note on me in this painting were the figurative paintings of Kerry James Marshall, who has depicted nude African Americans in iconic poses, such as Black Star 2, Frankenstein, and Bride of Frankenstein. In Facing Stigma I present a nude figure in an imaginary scene calmly holding one diamondback rattlesnake, while another snake approaches from below. This scene symbolizes the end of my own struggle against transgender and sexual stigma, internally and externally, both before as well as after my gender transition. This stigma is symbolized by poisonous snakes, who no longer provoke my intense fear and avoidance. The figure’s squatting position also symbolizes the challenge of facing stigma: this position strains one’s legs and back, which makes it difficult to hold for a long time. The two snakes with their distinctive diamond patterns add a diagonal element to the otherwise primarily vertical composition, and their color is repeated in the background in order to unify the painting’s color composition.

The Lonely Anarchist

In The Lonely Anarchist I present a nude figure holding a red and black anarchist flag, but one who is alone facing an empty and wide horizon. This scene reflects my past experience when I hid my transgender self and took an oppositional stance to a world which did not have a place for people like me. It also represents literally how I turned my back on the world, not allowing it to get close to or familiar with me. For I feared becoming too close to anyone when I hid my transgender identity. In time, after I came out and was no longer so isolated, I began to find solidarity with others and with groups, and starting in the 2000s, the world started to become much more open to transgender inclusion and recognition. The composition in this painting is stark and simple, conveying my uncompromising anarchist oppositional stance to the world in the past. The yellow sky in this painting echoes a background color from its partner painting with a figure facing forward.

Unease in Balancing Gender and No More Sacrifice to the Gender Polarizing Monster

In Unease in Balancing Gender a nude figure sits on top of an oversize, enormous snarling mask-like structure illuminated from within with a strong yellow and light orange glow. In the painting, the yin and yang ball held by the seated figure represents a cultural model of an ideal gender balance and calm that can prove harmful and elusive in striving to attain; hence, it is being cast down into the maw of a monster who symbolizes rigid gender codes and norms.

I realize that the yin and yang concept in Chinese thought represents a notion that opposites can interact and coexist in a complementary manner, thus integration as opposed to a conflict of opposites is a desired state. And in our culture, a normative and binary model of sexuality and gender of masculine men and feminine women predominates, which does not provide for nor include variations to it. Furthermore, on an individual level, though the model of complementary model of yin and yang may be an ideal, in practice, social convention and pressure to conform to cultural normative models of masculinity and femininity for men and women remains quite powerful. Thus, a strong stigma remains in force for feminine boys and men or masculine girls and women. For many individuals who don’t believe they can fit into the cultural model of normative gender, in trying to be someone they are not, or in the struggle to assert themselves as someone gendered differently, needless harm and sacrifices results.

The giant mask I created is perhaps partly inspired by my memory of the Moloch featured in Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis, but the image I held in my mind as I painted was of an enormous jack-o-lantern carved out with sinister, angry facial features and illuminated from within with a strong light. The irises of the eyes on this face with a narrow oblong shape are similar to a snake’s eyes, and the sharp teeth those of any predator. The mask’s nose-like structure resembles a pair of legs and feet with a giant nose or phallus between them, which echoes the issue of gender raised in the painting. 

In second version of the Moloch sacrifice scene that I named No More Sacrifice to the Gender Polarizing Monster, I decided to vary some of its elements: putting for example, the figure holding the yin and yang ball in the same squatting pose as the figures in the other two paintings, making the giant mask more three dimensional and complex with a second pair of eyes, which I associate with a pinball game. Also, in terms of a title, I use a term advanced by the psychologist Sandra Bem, gender polarization, which she defines as the notion that masculine and feminine in culture are set up as opposites, as an either/or dichotomy and binary with no middle ground. Such a model encourages emphasizing some masculine if one is man, or feminine if one is woman, traits of behavior and appearance, while minimizing those of their opposite gender, which results in gender polarization. 

Moloch’s mouth features a pair of human legs descending from its top, thus the notion of this Moloch as a consuming monster of humans becomes more explicit. Also, I provided background elements above the mask, elongated oval forms, which contrast against the Moloch’s angular teeth and eyes. Making the Moloch mask more complex in the second version may have blunted the powerful and more direct impression made by the simpler first version I realize, but at the same time I was curious to see the result. 

A Note About a Modern Moloch

In a modern sense, the term Moloch has been applied to anything that demands great sacrifice, and one such sacrifice in our enlightened age remains the cultural binary gender model for normative masculine for men and feminine for women, who are expected to adhere to prescribed codes of what is deemed gender appropriate behavior, appearance, and clothing. The primary population harmed most by such gender codes are gays, lesbians, bisexuals, intersex, transgender, and queer individuals. The majority of the runaway adolescent and young adult homeless population is GLBTQA+; addiction rates to alcohol are double in this minority relative to the rest of the population. Rates of suicide are higher in the GLBTQA+ population also. Needless to say, the rest of the population, heterosexual and cisgender are also negatively affected by masculine and feminine gender codes as well. Boys and men setting out to prove their manliness can result in bullying and violence, and girls and women demonstrating their femininity can lead to aggression turned inward in self-harm. 

Playing Catch with the Yin and Yang Ball

As I worked on my initial series of paintings, the notion arose of expanding it with more paintings that retained its ideas, but included showing two figures, as opposed to a solitary figure. So, I worked on some preparatory drawings, which included squatting figure throwing the yin and yang ball, but throwing it to another figure prepared to catch it. Initially I struggled with what sort of background to use in this painting. I could not really figure an appropriate one out in my drawing. In my painting, I added trees, but they seemed too conventional and did not convey any significant meaning: they just filled in an empty space with conventionally decorative landscape elements. Eventually I added a halo of intense light around the figure in the distance throwing the yin and yang ball to their partner, and this radiant halo reinforced the painting’s meaning: friends or lovers can overcome and ignore the limitations of gender binary categories, and simply enjoy one another for who they are. This is a genuine blessing; hence, I introduced the warm halo. 

Still I add what can appear to be the outline of a snake behind one figure’s back. On a formal level, this symbolic image links this painting to Facing Stigma, and it helps carry to interconnect a series of paintings meant to be seen together. On a thematic level, one can observe that threat of stigma, something which can prevent or undermine forming a genuine intimate relationship, has been relegated to the background in this painting. Also, it can be added that forming an intimate bond and relationship does much to help dispel the noxious effects of stigma that can limit an individual’s personal development. 

The Yin and Yang Ball Game Turned Upside Down and Another Sacrifice on the Tip of the Gender Polarizing Monster’s Tongue

My giant mask or Moloch paintings got positive feedback from viewers when I posted them on social media, and I was curious to explore variations of this image, so I decided to make different versions of them in new paintings. I worked on four preparatory drawings in graphite, and I also made color versions of them. Two of these drawings I used as paintings, and I stayed fairly close to the original drawings. 

To my surprise, one of the paintings, The Yin and Yang Ball Game Turned Upside Down, turned out to be much lighter and more playful than I expected, and this outcome pleased me. For it could be regarded as a complement to the scary and violent paintings with the large mask. These paintings can also imply that paranoia regarding adherence to gender categories has been overcome. That is, after a struggle to overcome the stigma from not adhering to cultural gender norms, these norms, which can cause so much fear, are seen for what they are—a formal cultural convention that possesses a powerful superstition force. 

A second painting, Another Sacrifice on the Tip of the Gender Polarizing Monster’s Tongue proved to be more ambiguous: both sinister and playful, as seeing a human body on a large tongue of a frightening monstrous face or mask implies its end is near. However, the bright colors in this painting work against perceiving it as very sinister. 

The Dark Awakening Diptych 

While working on the Facing Stigma painting, I thought over the fact that I was presenting myself and the transgender experience from a position of strength and success, as opposed to weakness and vulnerability. As a result, I decided to address the theme of vulnerability in two related paintings. In these paintings, I continued the practice of showing a figure in the same pose from the front and back, and used different symbols with each one. In these two paintings, Dark Awakening at Dawn with Owls and Oaks and Dark Awakening at Dusk with the Goat, the figures do not hold onto any symbolic objects to show their strength, but rather grasp at the edge of the oval forms in which they are enclosed as a result of fear. For what I meant to convey in these paintings was the isolation and fear resulting from the awakening of sexual feelings in adolescence. Likely this is a difficult, if not traumatic, time for most people in our society because there is no formal or ritual cultural initiation into this physical and psychological phase of sexual development. The figure enclosed within this sphere represents the fearful period of isolation that can result during sexual awakening, which thus becomes a dark one.

From my personal perspective this adolescent phase of sexual development was isolating, as well as terrifying and traumatic, because I feared to share my experiences, especially because I felt so vulnerable sexually: as an adolescent boy, who experienced a strong sexual, physical compulsion to adopt what I perceived as a woman’s conventional receptive sexual pose and role. 

As a source of solace and affection and escape in their dark sexual awakening, especially if they cannot trust their family or friends, and are shy and introspective, adolescents may turn to the worlds of nature, animals, and fantasy and science fiction. And all these elements find a place in my two dark awakening paintings. Perhaps the spectacular cover art that could be found on the covers of paperback fantasy and science fiction books that I read as an adolescence also reveals its influence in these two paintings. Though these paintings are fairly straightforward in terms of composition, I did face some challenges that I needed to overcome in finishing these paintings, making some adjustments in terms of color and composition from my initial color sketches. For example, for some reason I hoped to repeat the motif of serpent eyes in these paintings which appear in my drawings, but I soon realized they seemed quite out of place, so I removed them. 

The Trans-Vitruvian Figure Series of Paintings   

My series of Trans-Vitruvian figure paintings began while drawing and trying to generate more ideas for variations of the Moloch painting in preparatory drawings. In one of these drawings, I drew a figure that was standing victorious within the mouth of Moloch, as if reborn in its fiery maw, as opposed to being a victim or sacrifice consumed by the monster. Since this idea and image did not resonate to me, I decided to put the same figure into a somewhat different imaginary setting. I started out with several sketches in which only a remnant of the Moloch’s eyes remains, and I placed the figure standing between two giant yin and yang balls, implying they have transcended gender struggle and dualism. This sketch modified a few times served as the basis for the painting Transcending the Gender Divide: Putting an End to Gender Polarized Struggle.

Then I made three more sketches in which I show the human figure in different settings of the natural world. In a second sketch in this series, one figure stands in front of a forest temple-like structure, whose keystone is crowned with a bronze owl, which became the painting Finding Knowledge and Self-Understanding in the Forest Temple. In a third sketch a figure stands between two rows of pine trees, which became the painting Desire Awakening at the Evergreen Spirit and Body at Dawn. Finally, in a fourth sketch, a figure stands on giant acorns in an underground area shown in cross section with trees roots spreading from three trees, which became the painting Finding Strength in the Infinite Spirit of the Oak Tree.

In these paintings, I strove to convey affirming, heroic images of a transgender person's dignity and strength, and in part, I did so to provide thematic balance and contrast to my darker and more ambiguous paintings devoted to gender. For creating such thematically idealized and compositionally straightforward, centered, symmetrical paintings, I can imagine the sort of criticism I would hear in an art class critique when students share and discuss their work. For the only ambiguity that some viewers may find in these paintings is the question of whether the figure is a man or woman or both or simply to be left as an issue that is indeterminate and undecided. 

I also realized that I had ended up using a pose, which has become associated with Leonardo da Vinci’s ink drawing that has been named The Vitruvian Man in which da Vinci solved the problem of showing how the midpoint of a human figure is found at the navel only when its arms are extended upward level with the head and legs spread apart shoulder width within the circle's circumference, but the figure's center point shifts to the pubis or genital area when the figure is placed within a square. By superimposing two figure poses with differing arm and leg positions, Leonardo revealed a mistake in the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius' claim that center point of a human figure is at the navel within both a circle and a square. 

Since the circle symbolizes the spirit, the infinite, divine and sky, while the square, the physical body, the finite, secular and earth, showing and combining both geometric forms of an equal size to display ideal human proportions was important to Leonardo, because it reveals an underlying unity between the human spirit and nature. Also, Leonardo's Vitruvian figure shows his belief that an individual human being represents on a smaller scale the entirety of universe, or a human is a microcosm (small cosmos) of the macrocosm (large cosmos).

The Nude Self-Portrait

The challenge of revealing and exposing myself in essentially a frontal nude self-portrait, of course, did arise in my mind, and I worried about and wondered to myself whether I should do so. Though I had already done so in a few paintings, my posture, whether seated or standing, avoided showing my genitals, so I avoided the issue. And I found myself worrying before I first displayed Facing Stigma in a show: What would people think, how would they react, and how would I react and feel in the vicinity of my painting. 

Some modern figurative painters have taken on the challenge of painting themselves nude, and I decided to join them. My personal challenge with being in my nude self-portrait was overcoming a stigma that arose for me that I realized ironically after I came out as a transgender person! Prior to coming out, my stigma had been internal: the inability to publicly perform and declare my transgender identity. But once I had come out, and had taken estrogen to soften my features, develop small breasts, smoother skin, and undertaken electrolysis to remove my facial hair, I developed a new stigma concerning my transgender identity, or more precisely, my body —the self-consciousness of still having male external genitalia, but otherwise appearing to look like or partly or somewhat like a woman. 

Personally, I must admit that my nude self-image still makes me quite uncomfortable with myself. (And I realize for a variety of reasons, notably meeting the prevailing physical standards of beauty, this may be an issue for many individuals.) I wish I could be simply be a woman or a man in the manner that most cis-gender people are with their genitalia that is congruent to their biological sex. But for whatever reasons, my intuition and body have informed me that the path of having surgery to change my genitalia from external to internal is not for me, yet making some partial physical changes, such as electrolysis and softening of body and features has been desired. This has been a mixed blessing: I can remain truer to myself on the one hand, yet socially on the other hand, my body has become a curious, alluring anomaly or sexual novelty at best to some, or at worst, that of a monstrous freak that causes shock and horror to others, which results in a cringe reaction of disgust and avoidance.  

As transgender historian and activist Susan Stryker has argued, the best way to cope with the stigma of transgender monstrosity is to accept it and speak from such a position, or in the case of painting, represent oneself in it.* And in my painting Facing Stigma, I have used the snake, an ambiguous talismanic animal, whose venom provokes fear and a need to cautiously distance from it as part of my self-representation of my transgender self. This symbolic animal reinforces the effect that I imagine my transgender body provokes—shock, avoidance, horror at seeing and encountering me nude. For me, then, the painting constitutes a means to accept my own fearful self by accepting, literally holding a fear-provoking venomous snake near my shoulder in the painting, while remaining calm, while another one moves from below to possibly threaten me.

Generally, my body is not a public issue, since people customarily wear clothes. Yet, doubtless, the issue percolates at times beneath the surface of public civility: does she or he or they have the expected congruent genitalia that matches their gender presentation?!

* See Stryker’s article available online: https://read.dukeupress.edu/glq/article/1/3/237/69091/My-Words-to-Victor-Frankenstein-Above-the-Village

Paintings Referenced  

The Facing Stigma series

Facing Stigma, oil on canvas, 40” x 30”, 2019

The Lonely Anarchist, oil on canvas, 40” x 30”, 2019

Unease in Balancing Gender, oil on canvas, 36” x 24”, 2019

Playing Catch with the Yin and Yang Ball, oil on canvas, 40” x 28”, 2020

No More Sacrifice to the Gender Polarizing Monster, oil on canvas, 34” x 20”, 2020 

The Yin and Yang Ball Game Turned Upside Down, oil on canvas, 36” x 24”, 2020

Another Sacrifice on the Tip of the Gender Polarizing Monster’s Tongue, 40” x 30”, 2020

The Dark Awakening Series

Dark Awakening at Dawn with Owls and Oaks, oil on canvas, 28” x 40”, 2020

Dark Awakening at Dusk with the Goat, oil on canvas, 30” x 40”, 2020

The Trans-Vitruvian Series

Transcending the Gender Divide: Putting an End to Gender Polarized Struggle, 44” x 30”, 2020–2021

Finding Knowledge and Self-Understanding in the Forest Temple, 44” x 30”, 2020–2021

Finding Strength in the Infinite Spirit of the Oak Tree, 44" x 32", 2020–2021

Desire Awakening at the Evergreen Spirit and Body at Dawn, 44" x 32", 2020–2021