Meet the Artist
Han(a)
Clayton
Drawing and Painting
“I would like to begin my explanation of my work with a quote from The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchel. “When the faggots visit the fairies it is always like entering a wonderful dream. It seems like a dream to the fairies also. The earth is gentle and nourishing. The plants grow and flower and fruit. The sun and rain and moon and wind come and go and all the living things are thankful.” In a similar vein to this quote, my series Visitors is an ode to queer magic. Informed by homocore zines, tarot cards readings, personal rituals and experience, Visitors fuses external and internal worlds. The creatures in my paintings act as guides to deconstruct colonialist views on gender. They are dissatisfied observers of life on earth, signaling there are other ways of being. Born through an intuitive process of laying paint down and scraping it off until shapes and forms begin to emerge, this represents the endless ways in which we are doing and undoing ourselves to become our most true, authentic selves. ”
Born and raised in Hamilton Ontario, my work is heavily informed by DIY homocore zines, the archetypes in tarot, and personal rituals. Largely autobiographical, I work from a place of intuition and play, to document the small intimate moments within daily life. Although primarily a painter, I also create experimental videos as well as zines. Some of my previous work has dealt with notions of home, comparing our bodies to the places where we grew up, and the complex relationship that festers in both.
Nova Scotia College of Art and Design
Foundation Year
Minor Transferred
Drawing/Painting Video Editing