Original Painting

Acrylic and graphite on gallery wrapped canvas

24” x 36”

What have I had to hold back due to my gender? This work is a personification of what anxiety feels like while inhabiting a female presenting body. The constriction in the chest that tightens your muscles and steals your breath. The invisible limits that males place on our existence, presence, our voice. This painting is loose and gestural to enhance that motion, the cinching, the movement of the brushwork embodies the real movement in the act, the tightening while locked in place. Women have all felt this anxiety, we’ve all experienced being held back or held down, out of our control. 

What does it feel like for you? When are you anxious? What has made you anxious in the past? This piece is part of a series that works to explore this emotion, illustrate a symptom on the canvas.