Victoria Waleck

ARTIST STATEMENT

As an artist, I’ve always been drawn to painting and drawing challenging, dark subjects. In trying to capture and show the beauty in rot and rebirth or trying to capture and verbalize complicated emotions. In this series of work, I was inspired by a pattern of behavior I’ve noticed in politics and society: of taking a minority, or a group of people that isn’t widely understood, and demonizing them, turning people into monsters to rationalize their extinction. I drew a connection between this behavior and that of witch trials- turning an entire faith into an evil mysterious practice that lures and grooms children to demonic forces. I wanted to show how people in power use that behavior as a way to control the masses, further disenfranchise minorities, and get rid of people who are a threat to them.

Today Trans people are having their rights infringed on and revoked, their humanity stripped from them, and being painted as predators that lure and groom children to make them trans. I wanted to show this process, how faith is used as a weapon against people and a tool of control, and to show that the process of making your physical self more in line with your inner spiritual self is an act of radical self-love and divine.

Through this process I found putting the pits of despair and dehumanization to paper was easy; it’s easy to draw on the news stories of human suffering and show that reality. Capturing pain was easy but trying to capture and express the joy and love was difficult and almost alien to me- not because it doesn’t exist, The heights of trans joy are more powerful than the deepest pits of misery, but trying to express that joy, that love, was difficult.