I work in a variety of media including performance, painting, photography and video – all dealing with some form of portraiture. I am primarily interested in the visual and linguistic culture of queer desire and issues around representation. For the Bear Paintings, I am paying homage to the “Bear”, the term used in gay culture to describe men who are big and burly. In these portraits I have adorned the men, all of whom I know personally and not all of who are queer identified, with elfin ears. The ears are an extension of the otherwise sensitive poses and my sparse, whimsical treatment of the materials, all symbols of an effort to subvert the stereotype of Bears as hyper-masculine, stoic, unintelligent brutes. In this mythologized, romantic representation I seek to reclaim the complexity of identity and the beauty of difference. Derek Jackson
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