On Beauty 
Gender has been a primary theme of my work over the last ten years. In this new series I examined the charged nature of beauty in masculinity. There are consequences for boys who are considered too pretty. Indeed, becoming a man is full of cruel lessons. Though men are lovely, often it is women who are utilized to represent beauty in Western visual culture. Women also stand in for the emotions of sadness, vulnerability, and passivity while idealized masculinity is often represented as a monolith of unwavering strength. But what about the vulnerability of masculinity? What about masculine doubt, receptivity, melancholy. And what about the uniquely masculine aspects of beauty? I pursued this tension–between the gendered demands made upon aesthetics and emotion–to creat this work.