Howdy Cowboy
A painting series, ongoing
This series looks at the cowboy boot as both a symbol and an object of desire. I paint the boots instead of the figure: worn leather standing in for the western myth rather than a portrait of the person who wore them.
The cowboy holds a specific place in American imagery. It carries rugged individualism, conquest, and a narrow idea of what a hero looks like, and it has long helped hold up patriarchal norms. I’m drawn to that imagery and wary of it in equal measure. That’s the conflict at the center of this work: an attraction that doesn’t sit easy next to a refusal to keep feeding the patriarchal symbolism the figure carries. Painting the boot instead of the body is how I hold both of those things at once, without pretending one wins out.
I’m not trying to take the myth apart. I’m trying to sit inside its contradictions and ask questions about this desire when it knows better and still wants.
I’m honored to show this work at Fogtown Hoedown to place it inside a queer country western dance tradition that has always known costume can be a form of critique and reinvention.