Help fund portraits of trans women by Catherine Graffam

Catherine Graffam’s art Tumblr came across my newsfeed recently, and I was completely floored. Graffam’s oil paintings are primarily portraits of trans women, including a number of self-portraits. Her paintings are stunning – evocative, affecting, and full of personality. Trans women are not underrepresented in works of fine art, per se; in many ways we are the body of art – the figures on top of government buildings and on the bows of ships, the beauty ideal advanced by Michelangelo and da Vinci, the old statues in the Louvre. But there is a serious lack of representation of trans women by trans women, on trans women’s terms (you know, the condition of women in art). Graffam’s work disrupts that, using the language of oil painting.

Now, Graffam is fundraising for a portrait series of trans women called Trans-Pose. She has raised the funds to cover basic supplies – money she raises now will all go to her subjects, a diverse group of trans women who are all running their own crowdfunding campaigns. One of the first portraits from the series is below.

Portrait of Jobhaver (Rebeka Refuse) Oil on Canvas, 20×20 in. Catherine Graffam

“I had just graduated college and was trying to paint portraits full time (it was not working),” Graffam told me. “I had so many trans women friends who were increasingly falling into more and more difficult financial situations, and I had seen similar projects done but none were by a trans woman for other trans women (and trans fems) exclusively. I wanted to directly help my friends financially and use my privileges as a light skinned middle class person and platform as an artist that I have been able to grow because of those privileges, to lift up other trans women.”

Graffam graduated from The New Hampshire Institute of Art in May. “It was pretty traditional training by today’s standards,” she told me, “so it definitely influenced the structure and methods in which I paint. My process for this project is similar to that of how I usually work except the models whom I only have contact with online are in charge of the photographs I work from. I want them to have agency over their image and how they will be portrayed, since trans women are usually not given agency over our identity and experiences.”

Check out Graffam’s gorgeous work, and click here to support Trans-Pose. There will be a show of the work from this project on March 22nd, 2016 at McGowan Fine Art in Concord, NH.