09. Find Your Voice

ARTIST STATEMENT:

The subject of this piece is on two hands, which are holding, wearing bracelets that correspond to different LGBTQ+ flags, the rainbow one being the gay pride flag and the blue, pink and white one being the transgender pride flag. This piece was almost entirely digital. I used the hands from my 'Pure Contour Hands' series, and drew them in my photoshop program. Then, the rest of it was done digitally on my tablet. I choose to create this piece because I personally believe that hands don't have a gender (Sure, people have a 'sex' in their hands, with the build, but my belief is that sex and gender are different), so I wanted to used hands to show the story. The bracelets show somethings to be assumed, like maybe one of them is trans, and one of them is gay, but you'll never know who these are and what they go by, because it doesn't say. It is totally up to interpretation.

A composition rule that I use in this piece is informal balance, and this is seen in the way that the hands balance each other out, making the piece even and balanced. In the beginning of making this piece, I wanted to make a series, and have the same bace picture, but with multiple different bracelets. In the end, I ran out of time. Then, the original idea just had a white background with some writing somewhere on the image saying 'Love is Love'. This didn't end up happening as I added the galaxy background and forgot about the words.

The meaning behind this artwork is to show that it doesn't matter what someone's gender or sexuality is, they still have the right to love who they choose, and as long as that love doesn't hurt anyone, it is perfectly acceptable, because we are all human. This project means a lot to me, because I am good friends with a lot of people who are sexualities other than straight, transgender as well as gender non-binary. It kills me to see what their fellow LGBT+ people go through the things they go through, so I try to help them as much as possible.