This one is a special one to me.
This painting is of a beloved friend who is a lesbian and who has generally identified more with the masculine than the feminine. She is a wildly intuitive spiritual being, and one of those people who feels made of incredible light. When she came in to do the Witnessing the studio became so potent it was almost pulsing. The first sketch came out black. First layer of her relationship to this part of herself. The second sketch was the sweetest, most playful colorful image and the first one I'd ever done in teal and blue. Her inner self. So wonderful a thing to behold. She told me that after the Witnessing was the first time in her life she had felt comfortable in female form. Whoa. So amazing.
A little while later when I went to do her canvas painting it started with white on white. I kept being reminded, as I hunched over her painting on the floor, of monks kneeling over sand mandalas. I kept following the painting's cues like I always do (tiny step by tiny step) and kept waiting for it to turn into a pussy, or something that looked more literally like one but... it never did. It stayed spirit in a way. More mandala than vulva. Part way through the painting she moved to a big city and I found myself scribbling grey all around the edges. She said later when she saw it that that was exactly how she felt there-- that she was having to work hard to stay bright amidst all the grey and chaos. I got to see with this painting how a person's true essence knows no gender or physical limitation or boundary, and how ultimately this project is about people more than anything else-- who we are at our core and what we are going through. Most of all, how self acceptance and deep self-reverence are life changing and healing acts of activism and unspeakably powerful and needed.