Transcend: Portraying Trans & Non-Binary people in Art with Rae Senarighi

Art has such power to transform the way we see the world and to show us new perspectives, ideas, and values.  Art can also be an invitation to beauty and joy, which is something we all need more of in our lives and the world, especially in these times. This week In the Den, guest host Sara LaWall talks with special guest Rae Senarighi, also known as the Transpainter, about his experiences as a non-binary artist. They discuss his drive to create art that highlights and celebrates the lives and power of trans people, and his passion for bringing self-acceptance and love to the world. 

Special Guest: Rae Senarighi

Rae Senarighi/Transpainter (he/him) is your average non-binary cancer survivor inspiring self-compassion, activism, and gender resilience via unapologetic portraiture of vibrant transgender and non-binary power. Rae is on a mission to spread self-acceptance and love, evident in his portraiture, typography, and speaking engagements. As the creator of the “You Are Loved” campaign, Rae’s message of compassion has found a home on billboards in thousands of locations across the U.S. and Canada and includes flags and merch across the world. His partnerships with Schwinn, Nike and the Portland Trailblazers, GLAAD, and Netflix create trans visibility in diverse arenas.

Links from the Show:

• Rae’s website: https://transpainter.com/ 
• Rae on IG: Rae Senarighi | Artist (@transpainter) 
• Buy Rae’s merch here:  https://shop.transpainter.com/ 
• Join Mama Dragons today: www.mamadragons.org 

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Transcript

JEN: Hello and welcome to In The Den with Mama Dragons. I’m your host, Jen. This podcast was created to walk and talk with you through the journey of raising happy, healthy, and productive LGBTQ humans. Thanks for listening. We’re glad you’re here.

Hello, Mama Dragons community, I am Sara LaWall and I am your guest host today. I am so happy to be back with you for this amazing episode and, again, I want to thank Jen and the entire In the Den Podcast Team for inviting me to host and for being so wonderful to work with. 

We have a beautiful episode for you today focused on art! And I’m so excited because I love art and because I believe art has such a power to transform the way we see the world. It shows us new ideas and perspectives and invites new questions. And art can be a wonderful invitation to beauty and joy, which is certainly something we all need these days, especially in these challenging times.

So, I am so excited to introduce you to Rae Senarighi, AKA Transpainter. Rae’s work is incredible and powerful. When I first saw some of his paintings, I was really breathless for a moment. They were so stunningly beautiful and provocative. Many of you might be familiar with Rae’s work. I’m sure you’ve seen some of it around through the “You Are Loved” campaign, which combines beautiful floral graphics and typography on pride flags and billboards and signs and now merch across the U.S. and the globe. We’ll, of course, link to Rae’s website and work and socials in our show notes, but if you’re able to google right now, you can look up and see some of what I am talking about. I know that I’ve seen Rae’s designs everywhere and I didn’t even realize who the artist was until I was doing my research for this episode. So, Rae, I am so excited to have you on the show. What an honor to get to talk with you, welcome!

RAE: Thanks. I’m excited to get into some of the subject matters with y’all. I’m excited to be here.

SARA: Likewise. Now, I know that there is so much more to you and your collections – and we are going to get into all of that – but I also want to share a little bit more of your bio with folks because I really love how you describe yourself and your approach to art right there in your bio.

Rae Senarighi / Transpainter is your average non-binary cancer survivor; inspiring self-compassion, activism and gender resilience with unapologetic portraiture of vibrant transgender and non-binary power. Yes! Rae champions storytelling through art, working to create accurate and celebratory representation of the Transgender and LGBTQ+ communities in the fine art world and beyond. His portraiture celebrates transgender and non-binary individuals living their lives openly and telling their own stories. He’s partnered with the likes of Schwinn and Nike and the Portland Trail Blazers – that’s so cool – GLAAD and Netflix. Rae’s on a mission to spread self-acceptance and love; he hopes to remind others to not only love themselves, but to celebrate and lift up their respective communities.

Just reading that brings tears to my eyes and is such a beautiful connection with our Mama Dragons community that really seeks to do the same. So let’s get into it together. After all of that beautiful bio I want to start with a little bit of your story, the story of you and how you grew up and particularly how art played a role in your young life and formation as you kind of came into yourself as a professional artist.

RAE: Yeah. Great question. I’m one of those people that art has always been a part of my life. It’s never not been a part of my life. I, at a very young age, was interested in art. And my mom was a really talented artist. She, unfortunately never got the opportunity to go to commercial art school but I’m sure she would’ve absolutely loved to have been able to do that. She passed away when I was just 11 years old so I only had a short amount of time with her. But she did a couple of really important things in my life. One, I think the most important thing that she did was to show me unconditional love, and we can get into that more. But she was one of the grown ups in my life that showed me unconditional love. And she had her own problems in her life, but she managed to do that. And I feel like that’s one of the reasons I turned out okay. And the other thing that she did is she let me in while she was creating art and she used to create these incredible portraits with colored pencil.

SARA: Wow.

RAE: I still have her PrismaColor Colored pencil set. Nowadays they make them in plastic or paper. But the one I have is metal and it’s from the ‘80’s. And she did this very realistic, beautiful portraits. So I really learned a lot from her at a very young age and got to explore art. And my dad, for all of the ways that he may not have been a perfect parent, he really did see in me the artistic skill that I had and he also fostered that. And I really appreciate that and credit him for, he put me in a private art class, I remember, at a pretty young age. I can’t remember how old I was, maybe 3rd grade or something like that. And then they just did foster – he and my step mom – fostered art as I grew up. I ended up going to my initial freshman year of college in the town that I grew up in which is Missoula, Montana. And I was 19. I had just discovered that I was queer and, at the time, identified as a lesbian. And I ended up dropping out after my first year because I got an F in my painting class.

SARA: What? I can’t even believe it. I can’t believe it.

RAE: Well, it’s because I didn’t show up to class.

SARA: Okay. Okay. Okay. Not because of what you produced in class.

RAE: I definitely was just not ready to be in art school. I had a lot of learning about life and about myself to do. And so I dropped out and, again, I credit my father for really having a heart-to-heart with me when I was in my early 20s saying, “Look. I really want to support you going back to school. You have this talent. Let’s get you in art school.” And he put me through art school at an expensive, private art school.

SARA: Where did you go?

RAE: The Art Institute of Seattle which is no longer – a lot of the art institutes have since kind of shrunk because they became a private college instead of public. But I did get a great education there. I went back to school at 25, graduated when I was 29, was very serious about school when I went back. And got straight As. Got my only A in a math class ever in that.

SARA: Was it traditional math or was it. . .?

RAE: It was a dumbed down, let’s give these ar tists some practical math skills. And I just really took it seriously and was ready to be there when I went. And so I spent the time that I was in school there and then probably the first number of years really focused on my commercial art career and not really making art for myself. That didn’t start happening again until I survived cancer in 2015. Kind of a short version.

SARA: And I do want to talk a little bit about your cancer story and your art, and we’ll get there. But I’m curious when in your life did you know you wanted to be an artist? Was that early on?

RAE: Yeah. And I honestly, like, the upbringing I had, I was an only child for the most part. I had a stepbrother who lived with us for three years or so when I was 8 to 11-ish. But for the most part, I was an only child, and spent a lot of time by myself. Most of that time was doing art. And I remember being a young kid just with this sense of knowing that I was going to be, for lack of a better term, a famous artist someday. And I didn’t know what that meant and it felt weird to feel that way. And I don’t think that I ever shared that with anybody until maybe I was a couple years out of commercial art school. And, at that point, was like grappling with what I’m doing and what I’m supposed to be doing. Because I had this really deep sense of I’m supposed to be doing something else with my art versus just making money.

SARA: So when you say commercial art school, was it primarily geared toward graphic design?

RAE: Graphic design, I majored in graphic design.

SARA: Okay. So not as much the fine art side of things.

RAE: I did not pursue a fine art career. I pursued a commercial art career.

SARA: And it’s amazing to me to see how both are so extraordinary and so different but you really lean into both in your work on your website, that you have these beautiful fine art collections and painting collections, and this beautiful graphic art that now I realized everybody is replicating everywhere. Once you know a thing, you start to see it everywhere and now I am seeing it everywhere. What pulled at you to shift and to start leading into the fine art and the painting?

RAE: That really was surviving cancer.

SARA: It was. Talk about that a little bit. So I know on your website you have a “Love” collection that’s dedicated, it’s sort of inspired by your cancer journey and your cancer survival. Talk about that collection a little bit.

RAE: In January of 2015, I found a lump in my chest and I, at the time, was a scientific illustrator. And I started working for the University of Washington and they split and became their own Altius Institute of Biomedical Sciences. And so I was a scientific illustrator and I had also worked at a cancer institute and a radiology clinic – a couple radiology clinics – and so I knew right away what it was. I immediately sought medical treatment. We ended up delaying my surgery until early April just because of some timing things. But I got really lucky. This coming April, April 2025, will be my 10 year cancer free. I’ll be able to go off of the medication that I’ve been on for that entire time. There are different markers that they track when you have cancer and I just got lucky and I had probably the best-case scenario that I could’ve had. Also, there was a nurse that was a couple of years younger than me and was running marathons and she had just passed away from cancer. It was very shocking. She battled cancer for about a year. And then I had another friend who, she also was about my age, maybe a couple of years older. And she had been battling it for about a year when I got diagnosed and she lost that battle. And her memorial service was on the day of my surgery.

SARA: Oh, goodness.

RAE: So I’m really lucky. I really did not know that at the time. And I don’t think you can go through something like that whether it’s cancer – there’s so many people in this country that have gone through this battle. But there’s many other things, ways that people can be confronted by their own mortality. And I think it just fundamentally shifts some things when you go through something like that. And it certainly did with me. I remember really refocusing a lot of my energy in some very specific ways. One of those ways was to focus on gratitude and to focus every day on all the wonderful things that are healthy and divine about my body. And so I would do yoga – and I wear glasses – I’d take off my glasses so I couldn’t really focus in and be critical when I was looking at myself in the mirror or whatever. But I could see enough of my shape to see if my form was proper, right. But to just be there and kind of meditate on a healthy body. And that was a big part, and it still is a part of my self-care practices to notice when I’m sending myself criticism, especially in regards to my body. I think that as a trans person, obviously, there’s some body dysmorphia stuff that comes along with that. But I do think that it’s kind of universal that we are so socialized in this country in particular to be dissatisfied with ourselves in one way or another and to constantly be in this space of feeling like you’re not enough. And so I just made a conscious decision to never again send hate to my body, myself.

SARA: That’s beautiful.

RAE: And to focus on love. And then I also made a commitment to myself to make art that was for me and not for making money or for anyone else. But just make art for me for at least ten minutes every day.

SARA: I like that a lot. I think that’s a really great invitation to all of us, artists and non-artists, whatever the thing is, even if you love to dabble in art like I do. I’m nowhere near good. But the invitation to just do a thing you love, just for you, for ten minutes a day.

RAE: That’s really the thing. I think it’s a space to – whatever that creation is for you – maybe that’s making art in painting. Maybe that’s making music. Maybe you feel most creative when you’re outside running, whatever it is, or gardening, or whatever it is. I think that finding and carving out time and space to do those things that feed you and that bring you joy and energy. A lot of times, my ten minutes wouldn’t happen until the end of the day and I’d drag myself into my studio.

SARA: Good for you.

RAE: And then, instead of being in there for ten minutes, I’d end up in there for half an hour to two hours because it would give me energy and make me excited. And so whatever that is for you, I think it’s important. And if we don’t specifically carve out time for it, our lives are almost inevitably going to completely fill up with all the other obligations and all the other things.

SARA: Without a doubt.

RAE: So you just have to decide.

SARA: And you have to drag yourself to the space.

RAE: It’s hard.

SARA: And at the end of the day where all of us, I don’t know how many times I’ve made the excuses to not do the thing just for me because of the whole full day. And, as I’m listening to you and i see the beautiful painting behind you that I know is part of that “Love” collection, I’m struck by when we do that, when we take that time for ourselves to do the thing we love, to do the thing that feeds us, oftentimes what happens is these beautiful things start to unfold in all of the other spaces of our life. So, not only did you just make art just for you, that you love doing, that wasn’t about commercial success. And low-and-behold you created this gorgeous collection. Talk a little bit about the paintings and the collection and the vision behind that.

RAE: I knew I needed to go into my studio and paint. And I had no idea what to do. So I just started going into my studio and meditating on love. And decided I really like typography. I really like to create art with words. And so I drew out the word “love” in a completely connected line. And then I mapped it out over 25 canvases. And so the black line that runs through each canvas is part of this word, “Love.” But I mapped, I painted each one individually and just used measurements to figure out where the lines went. And so if you did put all of the 25 paintings together, they would spell the word “Love”. But I intentionally, actually when I got done with the series after spending about a year in my studio creating them, and they’re abstract. They were just color fields. They were a place for me to come and explore color and light and just feel the energy of meditating on love and painting. And it was beautiful. It was a really healing experience. And then when I did put them up, I – at this point it was mostly coffee shops in Portland and Seattle – and I had them all hanging at once in multiple locations for three or four months. And it was really exciting. And I loved the fact that all of the people who purchased a painting are intrinsically connected to one another because they own a piece of this. And that piece is part of a larger thing. And it was a really lovely experience. It gave me a place and it gave me some direction, which I needed at that point.

SARA: It’s beautiful. I love that idea that we are all connected, that the owners of the pieces are all connected, but the larger series itself says the same thing. And I just want to thank you personally. I am also a cancer survivor and you can see some of the “Love” collection and read more about it on Rae’s website, transpainter.com, in the fine art tab. But I was just really personally struck by your story. And so thank you for that. It made me feel overcome, but with love. And in my own cancer journey, I didn’t always feel that love. I felt kind of angry a lot. And this is just a really beautiful thing to see. 

Let’s keep going on this thread a little bit because what really strikes me about your work is that so much of yourself, your own identity, is wrapped up in your art. And I would say a lot of artists would name that but it wouldn’t be as obvious or they wouldn’t really talk about it and write about it with such clarity. It would just, oftentimes in the art world we hear a lot about, you have to excavate your own life for your art. And that’s true. And we, the receivers of the art, don’t always know what you’re excavating. But in your case, it’s very clear. And another collection that’s really gorgeous is this “Transcendents” collection of portraits of trans and nonbinary folks including Olympic athlete Chris Mosher, and so many others. And they’re gorgeous and they’re just so stunningly done. And I want to talk a little bit about the seeds of that work, where it came from, and how you put the whole series together, and what it means to you.

RAE: Yeah. Thank you. After I completed the “Love” series, I didn’t really know what was next. And I got hired to create a mural for this space in the brand new Portland Community College Campus that they had created in Rock Creek. And so they had the Q-Center, there, had a large wall that they just couldn’t figure out what to do with because it was so big that when they tried to put up a piece of art here and there, everything just got dwarfed by the fact that it was so large. And so they were like, let’s do a mural. And so I mocked up several ideas. We ended up landing on this idea to create kind of a rainbow wall, but it was like geometric shapes. It wasn’t exactly in a rainbow but it was all these different colors. And then I told them, how about you just decide on up to six LGBTQ leaders throughout history and I will paint them on the wall. And I had proposed and in the mock-ups that I gave them, I proposed that we just paint the figures in black over the really bright rainbow wall. And the geometric shape and all that kind of took me a while. I got that all mapped out, got it painted, was in the middle of painting, and the first person that I decided to paint that they had chosen was Harvey Milk who, as you may or may not know, was an incredible leader in California. But he was assassinated and he passed away. And so I was painting him. I got done with his portrait. It was in black paint on this colorful wall and I remember stepping back and my heart sank through the floor. I just felt so awful and I was so panicked because I had a certain time frame that I had to get this done.

SARA: You felt awful because it just didn’t look right?

RAE: It didn’t look right. It looked like those restaurants where you go in and there’s old newsprint on the walls. That’s what it looked like. And especially because I started with him and he wasn’t living anymore, I just felt this sense of sadness and it just was not the vibe that I wanted this Q-center for all these young queer people to feel. And I panicked and I went outside and was like, “I'm going to go for a walk. I’m going to clear my head and then I’m going to do some gratitude exercises or whatever and kind of just reassess what the heck I’m going to do here.” And I ended up doing some scrolling on the internet to find other artists and see what I could percolate some inspiration. And I ended up getting inspired by some artists who used some really, really vibrant colors. And it reminded me of the work I used to do in high school and in my initial year of college. I used to do a lot of figure drawing, you drop in and there’s a model. You have a few hours to just practice the human form. And I would use mostly chalk pastels and I would use really bright, vibrant, crazy colors. And it was really fun. And I got inspired by that and I thought, “Okay. These are LGBTQ people. We’re represented, we’ve long been represented by this symbol of the rainbow to symbolize diversity and to really celebrate that.” And so I thought, “Okay. I’m going to go in, I’m going to paint Harvey’s face and hair with rainbow colors and see what happens. And as soon as I made that decision, the art flowed out of me in such an inspired and exciting way. I just knew, right in that instant, that I was on to something.

SARA: I’m inspired by listening to you talk about how, once you switched and went into the painting skin tones in vibrant colors, you just knew it was right. And the art just came and started pouring forth. And I love that particular connection to the creative process . . .

RAE: That energy, you can feel it.

SARA: The energy, and when it’s pouring forth, and you know, “I just knew it was right!” and it just comes out of you. I love the clarity that you articulate, like you knew it was right to pay attention to yourself in those moments in the creative process when you do something. And then all the sudden your whole self and your whole spirit comes alive. You listened. You didn’t second guess yourself. You listened to that and just went with it. And it’s beautiful. And it looks like, and I’ve heard you talk about then, the clothing pieces are all done in gray-scale, black and white tones.

RAE: Yeah. I kept the black and white and really that’s because the rainbow colors on the skin somehow our eyes make sense of it and we accept it even though they are not in any way skin tones. But even on that wall, on that big wall, it works. But when I got back to my studio and I was done with that mural and it had gone so well that I had started posting those on Instagram and they got such strong reactions from other people that I knew I was onto something. And that really gave me some direction. I was excited about painting these LGBTQ leaders. And, as a trans person, as a nonbinary person, I just realized that I love going to art museums. I love looking at art and galleries. And I realized that I have never just gone to an art museum and walked into the portrait gallery and seen a trans person or nonbinary person.

SARA: Ah.

RAE: And I was like, “Well that’s informative. That gives me a lane. Here. Here’s a thing that I can do and I’ve literally been spending my entire adulthood knowing that I’m supposed to be doing something. What is it? Oh, here’s this thing.” I love making these paintings. I know I want to make more of them. But if I can focus it down to just focusing on trans and nonbinary people, maybe I can make a small dent in this vast gaping hole where there just really isn’t representation of us. And so it gave me a lot of excitement. It gave me a place to start. And I started with the “Transcend” Series and people, after I created that work, a lot of times people are like, “What are you going to do next?” And I’m like, “Listen. I found my thing. This is what I’m going to do.” There are plenty of examples right now of amazing incredible black artists who are doing the same work. Who are saying “There isn’t representation or it is a terrible representation of us. And we’re going to correct that.” Amy Sherald, she created the portrait of Michelle Obama that’s hanging in the [inaudible] and her whole body of work and what she continues to do is creating representation that she wants to see in the world. And so I very much consider my life’s work to do that. And there are many other trans artists now who are also doing this work. And all of us can spend the rest of our lives doing this work and we still won’t hardly make a dent.

SARA: And you still won’t make quite the dent.

RAE: It’s definitely something that I will continue to do. I’m working on a new series now, but it is in the same vein because I’ve found the thing that I want to do and the way that I think I can make a small difference in the world. And the most amazing thing has been traveling around the nation with these works. And it’s been really exciting to bring it to San Francisco and have it in the heart of the Castro.

SARA: Yes.

RAE: More importantly to me, more meaningfully to me – maybe it’s because I grew up in a small place – but I have been so struck by particularly by getting to see younger folks, young kids, who I don’t try to make stories about who’s coming to my shows or not but their parents have reached out to me afterwards and sent me pictures of their kids and their kid is standing in front of their favorite portrait and just beaming. And they sent me this picture and it means so much that that kid at, whatever, seven years old, is at this gallery space, in a revered place, and getting to see representation of a possibility model for them .

SARA: It’s extraordinary. As a parent of a trans teenager – and I’m sure she thinks I’m a little bit obnoxious – but I’m all over the “Oh my God, look at this person in the news. Oh my God, look at this person that works for the Federal Government. Look, the Secretary of HHS.” I’m just always, because I so dearly want her to see herself and people in her community doing amazing things. And I know that representation matters. It mattered to me. It mattered to me as a female-identified human when I was growing up to see other women doing extraordinary things made me understand that I could do them too. And your work is really, there’s  two amazing pieces about it. It’s not only representation of trans and nonbinary folks. But the folks that you choose to represent are extraordinary humans who’ve done some extraordinary things. And so that you are also exposing us to their lives and their stories. And that’s also amazing. I just scroll through and gasp every time I recognize one of them and think, “Oh yeah. And their story’s really cool too. Oh, there’s Chris Mosier.” And so how did you choose who to paint?

RAE: I have to tell you, I have a list about a mile long of people I want to paint.

SARA: That’s wonderful. Do people lobby you to paint them, yet?

RAE: Just a few times. I generally don’t go about it that way. But as I was starting out this project, and all of my projects thus far, have been completely self-funded. It’s just work that I’m trying to do. I have tried to write grants and have not, to this date, gotten funding from other outside sources to do this work. So even though I would’ve wanted to be able to go and create portraits in the traditional style of having someone sit in front of me so I could paint them, I did not have the means or the ability to do that at all. I was a new parent. I had just survived cancer. We’re trying to make it work in Portland and barely making by as far as financially being able to afford living, let alone traveling around and trying to collect that. So I ended up reaching out to people online and really had to work from existing images that they had. Or some people would go out and do a little photo shoot with a friend of theirs and send me photos. It took me a while to figure out how to do it. And I’m sure that I did it pretty clunkily in the beginning of not knowing how much to involve people and feeling really insecure about not wanting to take up too much of their time and space even though I’m sure they would’ve – some of them – would’ve wanted more input when I was starting out because I just didn’t know what I was doing. And I, over time, kind of developed a process where I would like get their permission to paint them and then oftentimes take a bunch of photos and show them, “These are the photos that I really love on your profile. Are there any that you’re really strongly drawn to or strongly don’t like?” Kind of weeding that out and creating a compilation of – And I’d use Photoshop, photoshop five different photos together to get the look that I was going for. “I love this shirt in here and what do you think about these earrings?” We would go back and forth. ACan I add some flowers to your hair?” things like that. And then getting their sign off before, then, painting. And so that’s how I did it for a long time. And then the work that I’m doing now, I’m really excited about. I had been dreaming of being able to travel around, talk to people, and work with a photographer. Because it takes me months to create the work that I do. And I actually work from black and white photography, which helps me with the work that I do.

SARA: Interesting.

RAE: So send me a photograph and, a little over a year ago, a friend of mine, and an incredible photographer based in Seattle Washington, his name is Steven Miller. He reached out to me because he is a white, cisgender, gay man and he has seen what’s been happening to the trans community over the last four or five years with the attacks and the stripping away of our rights and the stripping away of our bodily autonomy. He’s seen that and the bullying that’s happening to them from politicians. And he just felt really strongly that he wanted to create a body of work celebrating trans people. And he reached out to me knowing that I am a trans artist and he kind of wanted me to just advise him. And I was like “Steven, I’ve been wanting to collaborate with a photographer forever.” And so [inaudible] really excited. He traveled all the way out here to the Midwest and we photographed people last fall in Madison, Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Chicago, Illinois, and Minneapolis, Minnesota. And so I’m still working on those paintings. We got to sit down and interview each one of them.

SARA: Oh, wow!

RAE: Steven has been combing through the interviews and doing all the editing and sending them back and forth between them. He is also producing these gorgeous, large photography images that he created and then I am subsequently creating these large, 5 foot, paintings of them. And we will be having a collective, a joint showing of our works along with the interviews in the coming future. It is taking me a little bit longer to do those works so I’m not exactly sure when that’s going to happen. I’m working hard on it and it's really fun. It’s really nice to be able to work from really high resolution images and to have been able to meet with these folks and talk with them. And even as a trans person and doing this work for as long as I had been, I was still really struck and really brought to tears several times in interviews with people. And also there was so much there for me in the midst of all this to be able to sit and talk.

SARA: That’s how I feel looking at the portraits, struck and brought to tears. And also what’s really interesting is there is just this vibrance and joy that emanates from – even the ones that aren’t maybe joyful expressions – they might have a more serious expression, but you just feel this energy coming off of them and it just does something to me. So I’m glad to hear your work does the same thing to you because it’s really beautiful. I’m curious if “Transcend” is up anywhere. How folks can see it live in person if that’s a possibility?

RAE: Yeah. Actually, it’s going up for folks who are in Wisconsin. It's going to be up at Edgwood College from mid-October through the end of the semester. So I think through the beginning of December, I think.

SARA: Excellent.

RAE: And that work, that body of work, I have intentionally not been trying to sell those paintings. I made a decision really early on that I wasn’t going to be trying to sell them, mainly because even if some giant institution like the Smithsonian decided to purchase some of my paintings, most likely, they would be up for two or three years and then go into art storage. Maybe be brought out for some pride celebration or something like that. But it would spend most of its life in storage. So the works that I do sell now, I have folks sign a contract that that work will be on display, in public, for a minimum of 75 years.

SARA: That’s amazing.

RAE: And the only requirement is that they reach out to me, or my estate if I’m no longer here, and that I have the opportunity to find a public space for that to be. Because I do have a whole other career that I make money in. And this work, I’m not doing for notoriety or for money. I am doing it because I see a need and it’s something I feel like I can do, and what I want is for this to be in public spaces where trans people will be able to see themselves in public spaces.

SARA: I love that. I love that. That’s amazing. What a smart way to think through how to share it but with some parameters. I hadn’t even thought about it being in institutions where that might feel like a real victory in one's career, but they would then go away and not come back out for a long time. And I’m delighted to know that you have some boundaries and some direction around making sure that these paintings get to be seen for a very long time. And I really want to get myself to Wisconsin or wherever they are next. I look forward to, I hope, to be able to see some of them live in person in real life because they are also really big.

RAE: They’re really big. I think most people who’ve seen my work have seen it on a computer or on a phone. And it’s just not the same. Seeing them in person is really a different experience.

SARA: I can imagine.

RAE: Blue sky background that is behind all of them does several things. One, it helps kind of claim space in daylight that we don’t have to hide, that we can be out in the daylight, out in the open. But it also kind of takes away place. So we can learn more about these people. I always try and direct people to learn with a QR code who this person is. Go learn their story from them.

SARA: Oh, yes.

RAE: But the blue sky background sort of detaches them from being in a specific location. And it also kind of connects when you’re in a gallery space and all the sky is behind you. There’s this kind of open, kind of inspiring feeling, that honestly was kind of a side benefit of it. But the portraits are almost all three to four feet wide by 5 feet tall. They’re larger than life. They’re very exciting to see in person. So I would love to be able to get it out there.

SARA: Okay, Wisconsin people. Edgewood College, Mama Dragons community in Wisconsin. And report back because we want to know how amazing it really is in real life. 

I want to switch gears just a little bit because I could go on and on about the art. I just love it so much. But I want to hear a little bit more about you and your story as a trans artist in particular. And you told us a little bit about art in your life and it’s really clear how the identity and the representation piece has become such a core, important part of your art. But would you be willing to share a little bit about your coming out story and how you came into yourself?

RAE: Yeah. Absolutely. So I did grow up in a nondenominational Evangelical church. We were a very small church that just got smaller as I got older. I think it’s still there, though I have confirmed that the church has been researched by some folks at the University of Montana there as a cult because they highly encouraged people to cut themselves off from family who was not involved in the church, too. We were not allowed to have TV. We were not allowed, really, magazines. And we didn't celebrate any holidays. The only holidays we celebrated were… for Thanksgiving we would drive from Missoula, Montana all the way out to Portland Oregon. There was a church there and many of these affiliated churches but there was no overarching hierarchy. It was just a bunch of pastors who knew each other. They would all come to Portland and we would be in church service, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And then we would drive back on Sunday. And we would get up, we would go have breakfast there, we would have lunch there. We would break for dinner and then we would be in service until 11 o’clock or midnight and that was the holiday. I didn’t celebrate Christmas. I was the kid at school who, everybody’s in a Halloween costume and I would be not. And then my parents ended up sending me to a private Christian school in Missoula called Valley Christian. And, you know, me and the other kids from my church – even though all of the different churches sent their kids to this school – we were the weird Christians at the Christian school.

SARA: That’s very interesting.

RAE: So it was a very ostracizing experience growing up. I think I kind of went into survival mode. I became a wallflower.

SARA: Yeah. Understandably. Since you were so cut off from mainstream culture, what messages did you hear, if any, about queerness and gay folks and trans folks?

RAE: I was taught to fear them. I was taught to fear and pity them. So any messages that I got were that it was wrong, that these people were mentally ill and that they should die, basically.

SARA: Oh my Gosh.

RAE: I specifically remember messages like that. And whether they were overt or not. . .

SARA: It was clear.

RAE: Yeah. And I honestly didn’t have any concept of the fact that I was queer until I actually had left the Christian school. When I was 16, I decided, I told my parents, “I’m not going to go there anymore. I’m going to go to the public school that I’m in the district for.” Which is kind of funny because I transferred from Valley Christian to Hellgate High school.

SARA: Wait. Wait. What?

RAE: It’s called Hellgate high school because it’s in the Hellgate canyon.

SARA: Oh, goodness. Okay.

RAE: It’s just the name of the particular geographic region and the town. It’s funny. It’s a funny story.

SARA: It’s amusing, yes.

RAE: But I started going to public school for my junior and senior year. So junior year I really didn’t know anybody. Everybody had been going to school for a long time

SARA: Was that culture shock for you?

RAE: Big culture shock. I literally remember I did meet a few people and slowly became friends with a couple people. But I remember meeting up with my new friends, one of whom was Jewish and the other of whom was Buddist. And we were sitting cross-legged in the grass eating our lunch and I had this moment of just dawning on me that these two people were not bad because they believed differently than I did at that time. And it was such an earth-shattering moment for me. It was very memorable. And then my senior year, I finally cut off my hair. It took me a couple of tries. I cut it off to shoulder length. I always had hair down the middle of my back or all the way down almost. And that was one of the other things about the church that I grew up in. There was very, very strict gender roles. Men had to wear button-up shirts. They had to have clean shaven faces. There was lots of rules and then more rules, obviously, for people assigned female. I had to have long hair, no makeup, no jewelry. We had to wear skirts every day. And in Montana, that meant wearing skirts in four feet of snow.

SARA: Delightful.

RAE: Mm-hmm. So in my senior year, at the end of my senior year, I finally got the courage to cut my hair off. I had this idea. At the time, I remember that Wynona Ryder had short hair and I had a picture of her and I was like, “I want this.”

SARA: Me too. I think a lot of us did in that era, yes. It was a great haircut. So you’re doing all these things. You’re meeting a wide array of kids. Have you fully closed the door on your faith at this point yet?

RAE: No. I don’t think I had. I left that school because I saw so many kids who would pretend to be something while we were in school and then I would see them out doing the exact opposite of what we were “Supposed” to be doing on the weekends. And I was like, this is hypocritical. I don’t believe any of you. So it wasn’t even that I didn’t believe in my faith at that point. I just was like, I don’t believe in all of you and what you’re saying. Like, you’re not doing the things you’re saying.

SARA: So did you come out before you left the church?

RAE: I think I still thought that I was a Christian at that time .I don’t know that I would identify as that now. But at the time, I still did. When I cut my hair off, I think other people could see my queerness and I couldn’t still. So my very first girlfriend was a year older than me. She was a freshman in high school and I met her at a couple of events in the spring of my senior year. So right before I graduated. And I thought she was a really nice person and I was like, “Wow. This person’s so nice.” And I had no idea that she was flirting with me until she kissed me at one point. And then it was like, “Oh.” It was so shunned and so cut off from anything that was a possibility for me growing up that I just didn’t even consider it.

SARA: You didn’t have any words or language or concept really to.

RAE: I do remember – can I just share this?

SARA: Yes, please.

RAE: I remember the first night that she kissed me, we went to her dorm space and we hung out and kissed a lot. And that’s pretty much it. But I remember I had my bicycle and I rode my bike home and it was like a spring day and it was nice and I could feel the wind in my hair. And I remember just beaming the biggest smile in my entire life. I was just, “Wow. My life trajectory!” I all the sudden had hope and possibility, and excitement, and obviously feelings of love. And whatever, really it was just this incredible moment of realization of who I was. I didn’t figure out I was trans until I was 30. So that part took a lot longer for me to come to acceptance for to understand about myself.

SARA: And I’m curious if you’d talk about how much harm you felt from your faith community as you were coming out both times, then and now. And because I think there’s a lot of folks who struggle with that and have those deep wounds.

RAE: I didn’t come out to my dad right away. I was afraid to.

SARA: Sure.

RAE: He ended up going through my book that I left there. I had moved out because he told me I had to throw away all of my secular CDs or move out. And, again, I was 18 at the end of my senior year. So I moved out. I moved to an apartment building that was actually right next door to the church that I grew up in because it’s in a central location. So I was living somewhere else. I went there to use their computer to type out a paper and I left my book there. He went through and he saw these senior photos that my new girlfriend had given me that had her undying love professed on the back of them. So he confronted me then. And I was like, “Yep. I’m gay and I’m in love with this woman.” And that began our probably 10, 15 year running argument of whether or not gay people exist.

SARA: Oh my goodness.

RAE: And I just remember feeling – and I still feel – very shocked and disappointed and hurt by all of these people that knew me my whole life. We were a small church. We were a small community. We all knew each other very well.

SARA: And a very tight-knit community.

RAE: Very tight-knit and how many of them, they didn’t even have to say anything to me. I could feel it in their energy, the way that they looked at me was with disdain and with disgust. And I clearly had made my decision and was out. I was on the outs immediately. And there are, like, I can count on one hand how many people have treated me exactly the same from one day to the next who are still themselves who have love in their heart, truly. And some of them are still in the church, but they have never treated me any differently. 99.5% of all the people I grew up with immediately treated me differently. And I knew I wasn’t welcome there. That didn’t even have to be said. I did go back – when I spoke earlier about the woman who I’d grown up with who passed away who was younger than me. Her sister was my same age. We grew up together, went to school together. Her sister was two years younger than us. So when she passed away, I came back to be there for my friend and to be there just to show that I loved this person and she meant a lot to me. And so I went to – there was some portion of it that was in the school and one of the pastors that I grew up in, his son, who’s now a pastor in Canada, he came up to me and made a derogatory comment, undercutting comment ot me about the fact that I was wearing pants. And then I went to the church service – again, just to support my friend whose younger sister had just suddenly passed away, right. I’m there for that reason. And that same pastor got up behind the pulpit, gave a very long rambling, meandering sermon. And then in the middle of that sermon, in this very small church, he went on a tangent about how gay people can’t worship God.

SARA: Oh my god.

RAE: And I knew he was talking directly to me and he was basically being like, “Get out.” You know. And I waited. I sat there and I waited for about ten minutes and then I left. And my friend came out after me and was like, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know that was going to happen.” And that’s the last time I stepped foot in that church and it just confirmed for me what I already knew, right? But as soon as you cross this boundary and as soon as you do this unthinkable thing – which for me is just being myself – you are out. You are out. And that was made very clear to me. And it’s still very disappointing to me. It’s still confounding to me. It’s still, I know so many of these people and I consider them to be good, loving people. But they are so in this line of thinking that is so judgemental and it is so harsh in the way that it treats anyone that goes against, essentially, this very – at least in the church that I grew up in – it was very patriarchal and very authoritarian. It was very punishing. If you went against something, you were punished. And that’s where it seems to fall for me. And it makes me sad. It makes me sad that so many people are so ostracized. I’ve had to build my own community. I’ve had to build my own family. And I’ve done a really amazing job. The queer community, a lot of us, are in that situation where we have to find our community. We have to build our own families. I married into a family who’s like the most wonderful set of people you’ve ever met. When Gina, my wife, came out at 23, they immediately were like, “Oh, Okay.” And they immediately got involved in PFLAG. They were at the forefront and The PFLAG contingent in many Fourth of July Parade.

SARA: Fabulous.

RAE: They have shown me this other possibility and they went to a Universalist Unitarian church which is a different kind of church than the one I grew up in. But they are spiritual people. They are people who care very deeply about their community. And they have really shown me what it’s like to show up for your kids unconditionally even if that causes you to have to learn some new things. It’s really beautiful and really healing to be a part of that.

SARA: Thank you for naming that, too. I’m glad we got to go there because as painful and horrible as those experiences are to be ostracized by a faith community and a family – which breaks my heart as a parent – I’m also so thankful and delighted to know and hear that there are families who are not that. And there are families who have come from one and have completely gotten themselves to the welcoming, accepting, cheerleading side. And so it’s possible. So thank you for sharing. I really am interested in asking you because you’ve talked about starting your own family and kids. And you just shared with us your upbringing. And I’m curious as a trans parent and coming out as queer from your family of origin, what advice you might have for parents having lived in both of those spaces?

RAE: Parenting is amazing and it’s like the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

SARA: Agreed.

RAE: Absolutely the hardest job I have ever had. I recently found out and was diagnosed with ADHD, and a lot of things make more sense. My ADHD got a lot more pronounced once we had our second kid. And the ability for me to stay the calm, grounded parent that I want to be became harder and harder and harder. Now that I have this context of how my brain works and have medication that helps me, I am able to show up with that love and groundedness in a way that doesn’t take every fiber of my strength and determination to fake at all. Because we have kids who are very strong-willed and we’re trying to raise kids who have the ability and the autonomy to speak for themselves and to figure things out. And a lot of what my kids are in stages where their job is to push boundaries. It is to figure out “How far can I go?” And my alarm bells of safety go off all the time. But my biggest challenge is really just to show them the love and the grace and I want them to know the way that I know that my mom loved me. Even with all the mental health struggles she was going through, that I didn’t even know about, she showed me that unconditional love. And that, I think, is the key. Right there, my dad’s love has always been conditional and I have not met those conditions for a very long time, right?

SARA: Right.

RAE: And so that’s really the biggest difference. You can get through challenges. You can learn new things. Your kids are going to challenge you no matter what.

SARA: And you’re not going to get it right all the time. And you're not going to be a perfect parent all the time.

RAE: You’re never going to get it right all the time.

SARA: Even if you desperately want to be. So I hear that in your story too. So thank you for naming that. But the core of it is that unconditional love. If you can hold onto that.

RAE: Our kids, they know who they are. There’s lots that they need to learn. There’s lots that we get to help them discover. And there’s lots that we get to help them navigate. They know who they are. And if we are being good parents, we are listening to them when they tell us who they are. And that, again, that’s unconditional love when they say to us something that might be hard for us to hear or challenging or we get scared and we want to fix it, there’s lots that we can do as parents to help them, direct them. And then there’s lots that they are just going to teach us about who they are. And I think that unfolding can be really uncomfortable especially if we’ve been taught “This is wrong and that’s right and there’s a line between whatever that thing is.” Right now we’re talking about trans people and queer people and there’s a lot of religion that rejects that, even though Jesus never said anything about queer and trans people. And in fact, he just said to – he explicitly went out of his way to meet people who were very ostracized, to treat them with respect and reverence and with love, right?

SARA: There it is. There is the key right there to just hold onto it. Thank you for that. I have three quick questions that I like to end every interview with. So I like to ask everybody these questions .And you can just kind of throw your answers out there. But who are a couple of other queer artists or activists that inspire you or that you’re following right now? Who should we Google?

RAE: There’s an artist that I follow on Instagram who’s an incredible portrait artist. They, I think it’s T-H-I-X-, and they do portraiture on that really old, traditional style of oil paintings, folks in the [inaudible] it’s just gorgeous work. So please go find them, follow them, they’re incredible. I also follow one of my portrait subjects. Her name is Mila Jam, M-I-L-A  J-A-M, two words. And she is just an incredible human. She’s an activist for sure but she’s a musician and she makes this amazing art. She’s also got an incredible mom who sometimes shows up in her posts. And it’s so lovely to see this thriving, young, black trans woman who’s got an amazing career, who’s all over the place, and has this mom who’s supportive. I think that for this group, that would be really lovely for y’all to see.

SARA: I love it. We will look those up and if we’re able to put some links in our show notes, we’ll do that. I really love hearing from other people who else in the world should I check out. The next question is, what is bringing you joy right now in this moment in time? What is bringing you joy?

RAE: Hmm. Great question. Honestly, being a parent and me learning every single day, however challenging it is, me learning to be present with them, right? When I’m present and I just show up for whatever the random thing is that they want to do. Yesterday they wanted to play ice age in the backyard. And so they informed me what we were doing. They gave me a lot of rules. And it was just delightful and adorable. Sometimes I’m trying to get them out the door and rush them some place and so I’m not being present with them. And it can be really frustrating for me. And then it turns into something really frustrating for them. But for those moments when I actually am able to be grounded and present, that brings me so much joy and it’s just lovely.

SARA: That’s beautiful. When you are fully present there is the joy. You can find the joy.

RAE: Yes.

SARA: Thank you. I love that. Last question. The Mama Dragons community and the whole metaphor of Mama Dragons is about being fierce protectors of our kids. But I want to know more generally, I like to ask our guests what are you fierce about in the world, in life? What are you fierce about?

RAE: As a Libra with six or seven planets in Libra, I’m very interested in justice, right? And I get really upset about things that I feel like are unjust and unkind in particular. And so right now, I see what’s happening in the Middle East and I’m very upset by the way that, brown folks in particular, their lives are shown less respect. We are inundated and saturated in white supremacy. We are the fish in the ocean of white supremacy. We can often not see it. This is such a glaring example and it’s something that I feel really strongly about. It has nothing to do with, in my opinion, the autonomy and the ability for Jewish folks to live and thrive. And I have so many friends who are jewish who are also appalled by this because it really has to do with – if you believe in fundamental human rights, then that has to extend to every single human. It can’t just be other people who look like us. And that can also relate to trans people and queer people. The human rights have to apply to everyone.

SARA: Yes.

RAE: And everyone has to have the right to live and to have clean drinking water and be able to live their life.

SARA: And that is a beautiful thing to be fierce about, human rights has to apply to everyone. Thanks. That’s a great statement to end on, Rae. Thank you so very much for your time and your talent and your art and your gifts to this world. They are beautiful. And friends, if you want to bring some joy into your own life, I just highly suggest you follow Rae on the Instagram because every time I scroll through one of your posts, my whole face lights up. And they are fierce and they are about justice and they are beautiful and joyful. And so thankful for your time and your talent. We’re so grateful to have you.

RAE: Thank you so much for having me.

SARA: You’re welcome.

JEN: Thanks for joining us In the Den. Did you know that Mama Dragons also offers an eLearning program called Parachute. Through this interactive learning platform, you can learn more about how to affirm, support, and celebrate the LGBTQ+ people in your life. Learn more at mamadragon.org/parachute. Or find the link in the episode show notes under links.

If you enjoyed this episode, please tell your friends, and take a minute to leave a positive rating and review wherever you listen. Good reviews make us more visible and help us reach more folks who could benefit from listening. And if you’d like to help Mama Dragons in our mission to support, educate, and empower the parents of LGBTQ children, please donate at mamadragons.org or click the donate link in the show notes. For more information on Mama Dragons and the podcast, you can follow us on Instagram or Facebook or visit our website at mamadragons.org.