Artist Statement:

My name is Samantha Wigglesworth, I am a painter from Fort St John BC, a conservative oil and gas town. Growing up there as a queer artist there was never any representation of LGBTQ+ people, or portraits for that matter. The standard art you saw was landscapes, specifically paintings of our local peace river. When I moved to Abbostford to start my BFA at UFV in 2018 it was truly eye opening. It inspired me to create this show, Spectrum, to be a large statement of a queer person making queer art to be that representation I was missing growing up. This series of 2ft by 3ft portraits are designed to show what people of different genders and sexualies can look like. The point is that these representations could be anyone, someone you know, a stranger, the fact does not change that they still deserve respect.

Each of these portraits are unique, with their own personalities. To help easily distinguish them as individuals but still have unity I have made them all the same size and gave them each their own flat colour for the background. I have made the clothes appear flat to appear more as a placeholder to allow the realistic portrait to shine through. The last element is that each work has their own 3D aspect to them, whether that be an earring, a necklace, a hair accessory or all three. I picked something that would fit them and the personality I have created with them.