24″ X 48″, oil, marker and acrylic, on handmade recycled material panel. 2022
I meditate on tenderness frequently ( the mission of my life being to let you see me, and vice versa).
The tenderness I give myself meeting with the tenderness I can give you (I write love letters to the heft of my he a rt and leave them for the world to see).
My brother used to shave my head on my mama’s porch. As a queer person growing up in Southern Florida, I had to mitigate the parts of myself I could share not only outside the home, but also in the bounds of my own family (my mamas porch a metaphor for the distance between us).
In the tenderness of the relationship I share with my brother I was supported in being fully myself, so supported in fact he would shave my head for me and let my queerness shine. My brother is not without his troubled relationship with Florida and how it defined his masculinity and experience, as seen through the cigarette and the jasmine flowers in his pocket (the bees surrounding his head
because his thoughts are just that sweet ).
The path to the apartment we would share when we fled the complicated household of our mother is marked with the trials of getting there (the alligator between).
This is a painting about my brother loving and supporting me despite the ways smalltown Florida would demonize him for it.
To remain tender in the face of the south and love me in my fullness.
Kellyann Marie 