VIRTUAL SENIOR SHOW: Connor Alexander
Floral Impressions
Through the lens of westernized gender, people are seen as members of a binary. We are raised expected to conform to roles based on how we are born, regardless of whether or not they fit. The full breadth of gender identity cannot be defined as easily as this binary claims. As an effect of this cultural viewpoint, emblems emerge that carry stereotypes and traits assigned to one half of the binary. Flowers are used as a metaphor for femininity in its truest, idealized form: delicate, beautiful, and oftentimes sexual. While these traits are not inherently bad, forcing them and expecting them of people without their consent has always rubbed me the wrong way. As a transgender man, my relationship with expected femininity is one of intense discomfort. In my younger years, I viewed flowers as a direct emblem of the roles I was so deeply uncomfortable with and thus stayed away from them like the plague. Learning more about myself and my own perception of gender and gender roles over the years has given me a more in-depth understanding of gender. With an increase of comfort in my own identity also came an understanding of the ridiculousness of assigning a gender to plant matter. These paintings show me contemplating oppressive and forced roles, using flowers as a way to discuss my own outlook, experience, and identity as a transgender individual.
Title: "Floral Negative 1"
Medium: Oil painting on canvas, 2x4ft
Year: 2021
Description: A floral pattern populates this painting, though the flowers are painted in negative — unconforming to a more typical image of flowers.
Title: "A Conflict"
Medium: Oil painting on canvas, 2x4ft
Year: 2021
Description: The highly gendered colors blue and pink rise in conflict to each other, clearly separate yet at the same time they mix and swirl together. The line between the two is not so easily defined.
Title: "Floral Negative 2"
Medium: Oil painting on canvas, 2x4ft
Year: 2021
Description: These flowers are again depicted in negative, though a “feminine” pink is still present in places. Does this make these flowers feminine, or are they all just colors and shapes?
Title: "A Resolution"
Medium: Oil painting on canvas, 2x4ft
Year: 2021
Description: Blue and pink are present, but so are blacks and greens swirling into floral shapes. This painting resolves the binary by departing from it
Title: "Garden"
Medium: Oil painting on board, 7x7in
Year: 2021
Description: An alternative interpretation of the colors of a succulent plant.
Title: "Feminine Virtues"
Medium: Oil painting on canvas, 8x10in
Year: 2021
Description: Classically feminine things decorate the face of this figure, covering their eyes. What assumptions do you make about this person without actually knowing their gender?