For the last four years, I’ve moved away from using direct references in my work. I made this shift after realizing how easy it had become to generate an image using a simple prompt like, “A deer in a meadow, drinking from a lake, a figure stands behind the deer watching in silence.” A prompt could make the image, but it wouldn’t be art—nor would it be made by my hand. Around the same time, a coworker asked whether I still planned to be an artist now that an AI agent could make images more easily and efficiently. These two moments pushed me away from what is easily seen, toward what is felt.
I stopped using reference images entirely and began working from imagination. There have been incredible advancements in what I’ve been able to produce, but there are still parts of my process that need attention.
This year I’ve been trying to answer a question written on a slip of paper left at a bar during a winter party in 2025: What does it mean to take imagination seriously? I’m a very analytical person. In my therapy sessions I’m challenged with engaging and expressing my emotions. Imagination as a form of practice felt like a direct extension of my limited access to my own emotional life. With my drawings they became a way to engage with what was felt.
I have several drawings from the last two years that feel the most finished, but they’re not yet ready to become paintings. Working from imagination has left me without the textures and details I can only access by using—or creating—my own source materials. Bringing back in found source materials and documented texture and color scraps has been the most helpful. Right now, the detailed parts of the drawings feel flattened, when there is hair there is no texture and when there is foliage, it collapses into the simple shape of a tree’s limbs.
For color, I’ve been using transparency sheets, colored pencils, and watercolors to explore the palette. But when it comes to adding detail, with or without direct source material, I’m still stumbling. I tried using snapshots of my body for one piece, but the figure in the photograph had too much command over the drawing—it shifted the work into a different emotional register. Campy Allegory, a drawing from 2024, used three found sources—a hustler magazine, a reference image of corn stalks, and a helmet designed by Rubens—and those choices aligned more closely with the feeling of queer solitude and melancholy I was trying to access.
I’ve been slow in making work these last several years, partly because I’ve been working a day job that supports my transition goals while navigating one of the biggest creative blocks I’ve ever faced. My daily sketchbook practice has kept me anchored; many of the drawings I’m proudest of came from that routine.
Now the hardest part is figuring out how to move forward without a true support system, and without knowing whether I can “make it” as an artist. I’ve reached out about securing a studio space. For years I tried painting in laundry rooms, garages, and backrooms, but those spaces always felt empty—an echo of my own inferiority complex. At the time, there was not a space that felt like my own which was set aside for making paintings, nor did I feel comfortable creating and maintaining rituals—cigarette and coffee breaks with a studio mate, or even having a clear separation from my domestic life. I’m hoping that a space outside my home will make the commute and entry into the studio feel more intentional.
