fawned art

i was conditioned from a young age to behave, and to do it well, to be a good boy within a christian frame. what passed for goodness was really submission. i became very good at “behaving” and was rewarded for it. at jimmy swaggart’s school in baton rouge, i received a “good christian attitude” award. the memory is half-funny and mostly chilling. the manipulation was sometimes obvious, and often subtler. speaking up or doing something “wrong” could mean being prayed over, or my pleading to be “saved.” i was a gifted child, highly attuned to what was expected of me and adept at supplying what was desired.

home life reinforced this by other means. our family was the constant while everything else changed: countries, schools, friends. keeping the peace started to feel like safety and consistency. the atmosphere was a mix of love, adaptation, volatility, and distance, with religion present in both mild and fanatical forms. in one move, i was placed in a school for troubled youth with behavioural issues. it was the worst fit for me: intelligent, creative, not disruptive, just trying to adapt to a new country and language. i felt alien and out of place. the mismatch bred self-doubt, and i kept reshaping my behaviour to fit situations i never chose. it wasn’t a place to ask for help; the skill was staying off the radar.

during the same period, my sexuality became clear, and concealment folded into the same strategy. i adjusted my walk, voice, and gaze. i chose the safe story, smiled on cue, left early, and avoided situations that might expose the façade. the public me, wearing the social mask, went ahead. the rest stayed behind tinted glass. most of it happened before i could think. my body did it for me.

that pattern entered the work, and it found a new costume: professionalism, perfection, taste. underneath it was the same old fear that i would be exposed as a fraud. in the studio, it translated into a kind of filtering. i changed titles to make the work more vague. i avoided subjects that felt too revealing, especially sexuality. i softened what i really meant. i learned how to perform vulnerability without giving the real thing. i adapted the work towards an imagined audience i believed would understand it and buy it. the bargain was simple: if i reduced myself in advance, maybe i could avoid being ridiculed later.

perfection became a loop: anxiety, adjustment to an imagined critic, apology, adjustment again, and a quiet diminishing in how i spoke about the work and what i charged. i overworked pieces in search of “just right,” sometimes ending with work in fire or shards. commissions drained me as i read clients and ignored myself. i apologised for the time the work needed. i priced low and lived with the shortfall. despite all this, a few pieces survived me, and of that, i am proud.

there was a moment in cyprus when the strategy snapped. i was outside on the hill with a wide view, a light summer breeze, the sun shining. a carob tree cast shade that moved slowly across the floor. everything about the setting suggested calm and space. i was working on a portrait sculpture in chavant oil-based clay, chasing accuracy. the critic in my head had its usual script, measuring every line and value against an unlivable standard. the thought tightened into a sentence: i’m fucking useless, why am i wasting my time? my face clenched. heat flooded through me so quickly it felt like being taken over.

i punched the sculpture. it hit the ground. i saw my hand palm up. then the pain, and then the shock: i had fractured my wrist. the landscape was still doing what landscapes do, breeze, light, shade moving, as if nothing had happened. i remember thinking, cleanly, without negotiation: i can’t keep doing this. living a lie. filtering my work. if i can’t make it with complete honesty and rawness, i can’t work anymore. under the noise of it all was something sharper and harder to admit: fuck me for abandoning myself.

afterwards, i cleaned the studio as best i could. i tried to calm down, to accept the severity of what had happened, and the awareness that came with it. the old way had kept me safe for a long time. it no longer works. fawning has burned into rage, and rage can’t be sustained. what comes next is the harder work: changing the pattern, and moving toward something truer and freer, not as a concept, but in practice.

my voice is valid, and my art is valid, even if only for me. the experiment now is simple to describe and difficult to live: make a series unfiltered, and price it above my comfort zone. if there is any way forward for me, it is there.