Spotlight Artist

Matthew Weimer

West
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Table View

Two figures embrace on a bed, with a wine glass and smoking cigarette in the foreground.

oil on canvas

Embrace

Two pink-hued figures embracing while standing in a lake with green hills in the background.

oil on canvas

Natural Elation

Painting of an upraised pink arm in a field with green grass and trees under a blue sky.

oil on canvas

Featured in New American Paintings1 / 3

Artist Statement

 I love the intimacy of the male form and its interactions. Intimacy is not inherently sexual; there are several types. Intimacy piques my interest as a man, while as a Demisexual I crave it. I focus on homosocial and physical intimacy more than the sexual. I am interested in the queerness—ambiguity in sexualization, intimacy, and cravings/desires of the flesh. I use them with sexual tension and situations, while distancing myself from stereotypical Gay Art with its unrealistic expectations and sometimes excessive vulgar nature.

My work consists of Pink Boys (depictions of pink male figures), with the occasional other color boys mixed in. I think of pink invoking sensuality of tenderness in the Queer Homoeroticism world that the Pink Boys exist in; they are proud to be tender and to be intimate with one another in any form or situation.

The Pink Boy is a tender vessel of intimacy and queerness, combining elements of sensuality, reclamation, and ambiguity into the vessel of the pink boys’ world, shaped by a deliberate process of balance with explicit expression.

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