Contemplative and confessional, my work delves into how we build self-perceptions through psychometry – the impressions of stories that come to us when we touch familiar objects, exist in familiar places, and feel familiar skin. I see stories as the basic unit of understanding between humans, and imagination as fundamental to storytelling. We relate our inner narratives through stories, but we can never tell a perfectly true story. Instead, we embellish, editorialize, and reenact. To tell our stories, we play.

As a child, I had the freedom to truly indulge this impulse, play pretend, and fabricate elaborate fantasy worlds with my two younger brothers. In a low-income Oklahoma family, I had an early sense of belonging that other queer people don’t always get. These early examples of unconditional love and acceptance as a result of unabashed storytelling became the seeds for a sense of self and artistic growth amidst the turmoil of my queer coming-of-age. Over the years, having family, friends, and lovers as likely to indulge in make-believe as I am has nurtured a storyteller’s imagination that feeds into my approach to life and art. Simply put, getting older doesn’t mean living in an increasingly concrete world.

Psychometry requires a body to experience the world. Stories propagate themselves through our bones and skin. As a queer person, gay and male, my body is a place inspected by the male gaze, and a place from which the male gaze is projected. My relationship with my body is further complicated by chronic illness. It becomes a battleground where self-perception and bodily limitations wage war against each other. And my ability to share myself freely and intimately is connected to an upbringing filled with fantasy and fairy tales.