Gay Couples at the Beach
Because of the overwhelmingly positive reactions and likes you have left on my Instagram story yesterday, I have decided to post these paintings today.
I made these paintings a very long time ago — right from the very beginning when I started to explore using AI engines to create images of men. These scenes and subject matters — of two men with some age differences, doing relative mundane things, like having a walk at the beach — is something that I kept on creating.
These works were never intended to be seen. They are deeply personal. They were made well before this Instagram account even existed. I just felt a strong compulsion to make them. As I wrote in my IG story:
A lot of the works that you see on my feed are my personal experiences growing up as a gay man. They’re partly autobiographical, partly metaphorical, and partly fictional.
It’s hard for me to articulate what they are really about, or why I am making these works, because often they are feelings that I have that I simply can’t put into words.
In regards to the Greek mythology, they are stories and artworks that made a significant impact to me even as a child. Again, it’s really hard for me to express in words why I was drawn to them as a child, and why I kept on going back to them and in the works that I now create.
The only thing that I can say is that by posting and looking at them, I have been able get a bit closer to understanding myself. In some ways, they are reconciliation of sorts, of the complex emotions that I feel, and my inability to fully explain them with the analytical mind.
So I will likely continue to make them, and will likely continue to not be able to say what they’re about. But maybe some day in the future, I will see that missing thread that connects them all.
Text prompts with Midjourney, paintings with selected artists.
