Oh, Cronenberg, my beloved beast. 

This is my favorite painting I’ve ever made. Something I knew I wanted to represent in this series is how absolutely monstrous I felt. I wanted to show what those feelings looked like to me—what I saw when I looked in the mirror. I needed to show how hungry I was, how I was so anxious all the time that it felt like my bones were going to break through my skin, how I had lost any semblance of who I was. It had taken me years to kill off the child in me. I spent endless time being different things to different people just to feel like I belonged. When I finally sat down and tried to find myself again, to find who I truly am, Cronenberg was who I saw.

What started as a grotesque visage of my dysphoria slowly became something beautiful, at least to me. As I worked tirelessly on this painting, trying as hard as I could to make it perfect because it needed to be perfect, I started to fall in love with myself again. Maybe I am a demon but, in the words of Lady Gaga, “would that be so terrible”?