Vanilla

Digital Mixed Media Animation utilizing Procreate, Photoshop, Photomosh and After Effects. Vanilla started with the word prompt Chaos and a 10 minute abstract sketch on Joy of NFTs with NFTGirl. As I continued to work on the piece after the show, the memory of a friend gifting me stationary and a pen when I was 18-19 with a highly sexual, winking melting sundae and it said "Hot Mess" kept coming back to me, so I had to draw it. I realized through the process of drawing it, all the feelings from around that time started to surface which I decided to lean into. As a teenager, instead of expressing my sexuality, I was forced to suppress it to placate those around me - hence the vanilla ice cream tipping towards the term vanilla used in the BDSM world for people not in it. Where I grew up, being anything but straight was life threatening at worst, socially threatening at best, so even though I'm a queer woman, expressing any desire towards the feminine form was something I learned to self censor at a young age out of self preservation. This repression caused a multitude of uncomfortable, chaotic and conflicting feelings which is evident in the bright colors against the grey static. Chaos layers on chaos boxed in explodes over the top melting drops in the volcanic overflow that inevitably happens. As I've gotten older and living in places more accepting of different lifestyles and sexualities, I've stopped mostly self-censoring. Instead the conflict now is against external censorship of my story, my art and who I am. Vanilla is all of these frustrations layered in the silliness of an ice cream cone with tits to bring forth a saccharine expression of hiding myself for so long and for some others not willing to accept me for who I am: a lewd, hot mess.