Meet Rae Senarighi | Transpainter | Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Rae Senarighi and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Rae, what principle do you value most?
After surviving cancer in 2015, I made several commitments to myself. One of those was to make the art that I want to make, regardless of whether or not it makes money. I also gave myself a guiding principle that all of the art I make would be based in love. I know that might sound cheesy, but to me, it’s proven quite useful in helping me to hone in on what I’m really trying to say. When I look around at the world and I see so much pain and suffering, I see my community being attacked relentlessly, and it makes me angry. Basing my art in love helps me to focus. It guides me to create what I want to see in the world vs. focusing on the hatred that I’m fighting against. It is not easy and it’s not about fluff or surface level appeasement. It’s honestly about grappling with difficult things in life and then searching for the hope, the humanity, amidst the pain.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Creating accurate and celebratory portraiture of the trans and nonbinary community is my life’s work. I paint large scale portraits, using rainbow colors for the skin and hair and using black and white for their clothing. The rainbow has long been a symbol for the LGBTQ+ community, so it is symbolic in that way and it is also a wonderful challenge with each portrait. I paint from black and white photography, so it becomes a translation of light and how our eyes perceive color. It’s like a puzzle each time I create a portrait. I also include a blue sky and clouds background behind each portrait. This is an homage to reclaiming space for our community. Trans people have long been told to hide ourselves in order to be safe and this is a way to show that we belong and we deserve safety in public space.

When I first began creating these portraits in my studio, I knew I was on to something, but I had no proof. No one had seen them, save for my family and some close friends. But I kept going and created a body of work large enough for a solo gallery show. I reached out to my network far and wide and booked my first gallery show on the east coast, which was all the way across the country from where I was living at the time, in Portland, Oregon. The first couple of years I managed to criss cross the country and get my art up in a number of places, all the while learning how to fund this effort. It was a lot of learning and a lot of scrambling. I also had some really fortunate big breaks, like when Netflix reached out to have me create a series of live painted portraits of trans people for their First Time I Saw Me, Trans Voices special.

In the last couple of years, I’ve also begun to use my graphic design skills to create floral artwork with bold block lettered messages of affirmation and human rights. My portraiture work takes a long time to create, so having a way to express myself in a faster format is helpful, particularly when I need to get a clear message off my chest.

This lead to my creating the “You Are Loved” artwork, which started as one billboard in Madison, WI and has now spread to over 200 billboards across the united states. Creating artwork where I’m communicating directly to my target audience, in this case, trans youth, has proven surprisingly powerful in that so many other folks resonated with it too. I donated this art to help raise money for organizations who are helping the LGBTQ+ community and it has spread like wildfire. So many people want to help spread this message. All of the hundreds of billboards, yard signs and bumper stickers across the country have been grassroots funded. This has been incredibly inspiring to me. And, even though I donated this artwork, it has generated many well paid opportunities for me professionally. Which I think just proves that you don’t have to make art that you *think* people want. When I was younger and still finding my way as an artist, I often thought I needed to look at trends and try to create art that people wanted to buy. I did okay when I was creating from this place. I made money, I paid the bills, I worked a lot. But now that I’m making the art that I want to see in the world, I am having opportunities come to me to make more of the art I want to make. It’s very affirming.

I will also say one other thing, when it comes to making art and finding your way. When I graduated from commercial art school and landed my job as a scientific illustrator, for many years I had this nagging feeling that I was supposed to be doing something else. I didn’t know what that something else was, but the feeling lingered. When I survived cancer, I realized I might not have all the time in the world and I just needed to start creating the art I wanted to make. That brush with death lit a fire under me to stop wondering and just start making. But what I also think is important is that for all those years (nearly a decade) of illustrating the natural world in micro and macro, I was honing my skills. Those years weren’t in vain. They helped me master my skills and get my 10,000 hours in. All of that work has informed the work I do today, even though the subject matter is different.

I say all of this to encourage anyone who’s reading this to know that you are never “off your path”, so to speak. It’s YOUR path, not anyone else’s. So it won’t look like anyone else’s path and that’s okay. If you feel driven to do something different, take some small step towards that every day. It feels slow when you’re starting, but just keep going. Your unique path is exactly that: yours.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My shoutout goes to every Black and brown transwoman in this country and beyond. People like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera were at the forefront of the LGBTQ+ movement for human rights and liberation. And there are myriads on the front lines now. People like Imara Jones, Raquel Willis, Jennicet Gutiérrez, Qween Jean, Ceyenne Doroshow and Ashlee Marie Preston, just to name a few, are all women who are using their skills, their voices and their creativity to help fight for the human rights and dignity of the trans community. They inspire me every day to use whatever platform I have and whatever energy I can muster, to do as much good in the world as I am able. When I feel downtrodden and exhausted, I know that I can keep going because I see them continuing on. The rights I enjoy today were fought for tooth and nail by those before me and I am truly grateful and in awe of the strides forward they managed to take us. The fight for human rights is a seemingly never ending one, but it’s worth fighting and I find my strength in my community.

Website: www.transpainter.com

Instagram: @transpainter

Facebook: /transpainter

Image Credits
Bruce Fritz, Fritz Photography, LLC Mark Rasdorf Michelle Morris