By Thomas Van Der Kunst

FR resident art critic

In Morgan Delacroix’s masterful oil painting ‘Make Room for Mama,’ viewers are invited into a transformative moment as a trans woman steps into a locker room filled with cisgender women.

Delacroix’s lush brushwork and thoughtful composition foster understanding with a vibrant color palette bringing depth and texture as a timid trans woman navigates her new space with grace and vulnerability, expressing her desire for inclusivity so often denied by binary gender divisions.

A Place of Belonging

Taylor Monroe

Taylor Monroe’s compelling ‘A Place of Belonging’ offers a thought-provoking exploration of a trans woman who confidently enters a cisgender locker room, effortlessly creating an atmosphere of comfort and camaraderie.

Monroe’s vibrant color palette brings life to the playful faces of the cisgender women. Each brushstroke portrays the trans woman’s self-assured authenticity. Her body language and facial expression convey a sense of belonging.

Monroe skillfully captures the diverse reactions of the cisgender women embracing diversity resonating with empathy and compassion in bridging divides, fostering understanding, and finding acceptance.

Demanding Inclusion

Avery Magpiesi

Avery Magpiesi’s compelling ‘Demanding Inclusion’ presents a powerful exploration of perseverance and acceptance, as a trans sow pushes her way into a men’s restroom, asserting her right to be included as a female human.

Magpiesi brings home the bacon with bold artistic brush strokes featuring vibrant colors of pink and crispy brown, amplifying the struggle faced by trans-humans not to transition to a heaping hunk of pulled pork or slow-cooked St Louis-style BBQ ribs, while being excluded from spaces that align more closely with their identity.

Magpiesi’s brushwork exudes the urgency and determination of a sow’s unwavering resolve not to ham it up in a piggish stunt, but to break down barriers of the trans [not SUB!] human yearning for acceptance, while dismantling exclusionary practices that tend to keep trans humans endlessly slow-twirling on a spit with an apple in their mouth and striving for a society which does not seek to live high off the hog, but embraces all creatures in all their delicious forms, as truly human.

Nurturing Love

Reese Fontaine

In the artwork titled ‘Nurturing Love,’ Reese Fontaine captures a poignant scene, portraying a man engaging in chest-feeding, tenderly emotionally nourishing a young child.

With its delicate brushwork, the artist skillfully captures the intimate connection between man and child, evoking a subtle interplay of light and shadow creating a serene loving atmosphere, while highlighting the importance of men breastfeeding babies as the universal language of love. The serene, if malnourished countenance of the babe in ‘Nurturing Love,’ encourages viewers to reflect on the woeful slight to men who cannot lactate, prompting a reevaluation of Nature’s naturalness or the Divine’s infallibility, in light of the too-frequent blunders in mis-selecting bodies and genders misfitted to the mind and emotions of their inhabitants, inviting viewers to embrace forgiveness while celebrating the fact that the need for human milk is not as important as imbibing the milk of human kindness.

Come Be At Peace

Riley Valencia

Riley Valencia’s wondrous watercolor ‘Come Be At Peace’ presents a thought-provoking exploration of inclusivity, empathy, and the power of love as it portrays a poignant scene where large trans women encounter hesitation and rejection from diminutive cisgender women in a locker room.

However, the giantess trans women respond with acts of kindness, baking cookies to bridge the divide and foster an understanding that cis are sisters too.

Valencia’s brushstrokes blend hues guiding the eye to the central figures—the large trans women and the diminutive cisgenders seeking acceptance with discomfort and hesitations encountered when large trans women bake cookies to build bridges and create harmony and hand them to you when you are naked, which highlights the empathy and compassion for the struggles faced by cisgender individuals who unnecessarily fear the physically larger trans women when they should realize cookies can bridge the gaps that separate.

This Bud’s 4 Ze

MK10Art’s ‘This Bud’s 4 Ze’ is a remarkable canvas that encapsulates the essence of a trans woman’s journey while evoking the specter of $4 billion worth of flat beer.

With brushstrokes that transcend confidence and exude vulnerability, MK10ART portrays trans woman Dylan Mulvaney with a delicate interplay of translucent colors, capturing the complexity of her experience and inviting viewers to embrace profound humanity while their stock investment in Budweiser plummets.

The title, ‘This Bud’s 4 Ze,’ subtly references the pivotal moment when Budweiser faced an unanticipated corporate miscue combined with the underscoring power of identity and resilience.

The composition boasts meticulous attention to detail; the artist employs a tableau vivant, breathing life into this poignant narrative which makes us want to celebrate the joy of beer and the removal of our testicles.

While Budweiser sales go a-flushing down the toilet with no bidet in sight, Mulvaney radiates strength, authenticity, and a soul brimming with a six-pack worth of calorie-light, cash-lighter Bud Light – a testament to the resilience of a corporation willing to triumph with self-expression over profits.

‘This Bud’s 4 Ze’ provides a much-needed quenching of our thirst for inclusivity and beckons viewers to get drunk like a man on the only beer that will expand your diversity while excluding your inclusive waistline so that when you finally fully transition and slice off that nuisance you’ve wanted to be rid of all your life, you will be inviting a more compassionate understanding of the drunken deepest long-parched quest on this gloriously light blue, light pink and white earth.

‘This Bud’s 4 Ze’ is in its simplest translation a profound artistic statement, merging the death of the corporate beer, as it transitions from flat flavorless, and unappealing, as you, once you transition to the opposite gender of your birth, do the opposite, celebrating the transformative power of lower-caloric beer as the door to self-discovery.

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