Category
PaintingBLUE
2021
1580 x 1110mm. Acrylic and oil on Belgian linen.
Blue is a mixed bag of references and appropriations. The genesis of this work was a trip I took down the rabbit hole that is the colour blue.
I’ve always been drawn to Gainsborough’s Blue Boy painting and was both unsurprised and intrigued when I discovered much of the wider gay male community was also.
For most of its existence, the portrait was widely viewed as a positive representation of youthful manliness, but mid-way through the twentieth century this changed. Blue Boy with his proud stance and flouncy costume came to be associated with the despised sissy.
The shift in perception luckily saw Blue Boy swiftly whisked up in the protective arms of gay appropriation. The 1974 first edition of Blue Boy, a gay men’s lifestyle (soft porn) magazine featured a model in costume as Blue Boy. The magazine’s ‘bb’ logo, (phallic pun intended) reminded me of some park graffiti, which in turn reminded me of another piece of graffiti that I stopped to read…
Thrown into the mix is the startling fact I came across whilst down the blue rabbit hole – Viagra can turn your vision blue!
Photography by Emma Byrnes