Winter Triptych from Ramsey’s Draft (2020)
When looking at my life there are a few periods that stand out as “defining moments”. There are the early years with my partner, where I learned how to exist as an adult, there are the college years I fight to live down, there are the past couple years where I’ve actively sought reinvention, and then there are the curiously self-defining years of 1st through 3rd grade. More than any other, these are the years that I feel defined me. Every time I pause to reflect on my life, motivations, and works I always find myself returning to those years.
I’ve written a lot about individual defining events that happened during those years, but I’ve never written explicitly about them together in the same place. Every other period of self-definition and self-creation I’ve experienced was in direct conversation with the collective experience of that time. I feel like coming to grips with all of the events of that period has been a foundational part of understanding my work as a whole.
To put it bluntly, I had an unusual childhood. That shouldn’t be surprising if you are aware that I am an American southerner, from Appalachia, and also neurodivergent, intersex, transgender, and queer. While many of those years have largely existed as a black hole in my memory, the ages of 6-8 years old have stayed crystal clear, despite my best efforts.
Autumn Triptych (2020)
So, what exactly happened?
First, I fell behind in school. I quit being able to keep up with my peers in class, couldn’t focus in the classroom, was extremely accident prone, couldn’t control my hands well, and had a speech impediment that was exacerbated by my accent. Around the same time, my best friend was removed from my school and sent to a “special school” after receiving an Autism diagnosis. This prompted teachers and school administrators to tell my parents that I should be tested. I was tested a couple times, but didn’t meet the criteria for what at the time was Autism Disorder or Asperger’s Syndrome. Instead, I was initially diagnosed with a “Pervasive Developmental Disorder – Not Otherwise Specified”, Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), and eventually Attention Deficit Disorder. The people running the tests also said that I exhibited all the signs that I should be tested for Dyslexia and Dysgraphia (which never formally happened).
I wasn’t taken out of my school, but I do remember multiple adults arguing over whether or not I’d “ever have a normal life” and the r-slur was thrown around a lot. I did end up spending a significant portion of my school days in alternative classrooms, and my recess was replaced by speech therapy. This isolated me from the rest of my peers at school, but that had nothing on what happened at home.
At home my parents weren’t getting along well. They had frequent fights and quite often I was the topic of these fights. My dad checked out and my mom clamped down hard with the goal of “fixing” me. Because I had difficulty focusing, I was surrounded by blank white cardboard when doing work. Whenever I didn’t have homework, my mom would force me to do writing & reading exercises. My siblings would go play with their friends, but I was inside, alone, and forced to do work in order to “fix me.” Emotional, verbal, and physical abuse were all used as tools in this effort.
Negative Inversion Portfolio (2023-2025)
As fate would have it, one of those efforts to fix me was to enroll me in an after school art program. This was to address my deficits in communication and “train” me to have the fine motor skills I didn’t have due to the DCD (Note: You cannot train away DCD. It is a life-long disorder).
I fell in love with art. It was one of the few places I could freely be social, the adults around me were encouraging rather than corrective, and I could create anything I wanted, as long as I could make something “acceptable” up to tell the less accepting adults and my parents. It was a world I could slip away into and be myself.
In either 2nd or 3rd grade, we had a special visitor. A professional artist was working in the area and had asked to use our building after hours. The school agreed so long as they did a demonstration for the students. So, there I was leaning against Sally Mann as she developed glass plates in our school’s art room sink. I was blown away by her aura and at the idea of “professional artist”. It was in that moment I decided that I would be an artist.
It was also during this period that I began having “visions.” After telling my parents about them was either disregarded or resulted in what I perceived as punishment, I kept these to myself. It started out as brief visual hallucinations, but eventually became longer lasting and auditory. These happened after particularly bad evenings at home and became the subject matter of many art pieces I kept to myself. These pieces I would hide from my parents and destroy in different ways to keep them hidden.
In a very short period of time I vowed to myself to become an artist, saw it as an extension of my true self, and became terrified of both my art and myself.
“Broken” Portfolio (2025-2026)
The legacy of that time haunts me. It set the stage for the coming years’ traumas around sex, gender, sexuality, suicide, death, and assault. On the one hand, I feel an innate sense of “home”, safety, freedom, and authenticity when creating artwork. On the other hand is a deathly fear of letting others see those parts of my work. I’m terrified of being honest with myself and others about the work I create. I feel like an imposter when putting my work in front of people. Like I am tricking or manipulating people into seeing someone I am not allowed to be by showing it to them. In my darkest moments, I’ve thrown away entire bodies of work – even going so far as to throw out years worth photos, paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures.
Shadow Work (Fall 2023)
For the past three years I’ve struggled with the question, “what are your dreams or aspirations?” The honest answer was and still is “To be an artist”.
By most accounts I’ve had a more successful than average career. I’ve had over 180 works published. I’ve held more than 7 solo exhibitions of unique portfolios and participated in many groups shows. My work has hung in the same gallery spaces as some of my heroes, such as Adams, Weston, Winogrand, Eggleston, Carter, etc. I’ve had my work studied in university photography classes in at least three countries. Many photographers I look up to and see as being the top of the craft know my work and hold it in some esteem. And I’ve directly seen the influence of my work in the work of others.
Still, I don’t see myself as having achieved my dream of being an artist, and at times it breaks my heart. It isn’t that I don’t think that those are real accomplishments or that it was undeserved. It is that those are the achievements of my work, not me.
In the past several years I’ve taken great strides in accepting myself and letting go of a number of masks I used to protect me in childhood. I’ve reached a place where I am thinking about legacy and what dreams I still have to achieve. I have left a mark on this world and I like to think it has been a positive one. My goal now is breaking free from the stories I told myself to survive my childhood, and in so doing, let myself join the art world in a capacity beyond social media and the void that is the internet.
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