Tierno embodies my version of creativity because it pays homage to the facets of my life that inspire me the most. Its title means ‘tender’ in Spanish, highlighting the gentle moments of my life that are woven into my paintings. In Tierno, I depict a portrait of my partner, Beau, who fuels me with inspiration and support daily. With this in mind, Tierno is a painting about the support of a loved one as much as it is an introspection into my most tender moments. The painting is done with oil on canvas and is an expansive 36 x 48 inches. I celebrate art history in this piece, especially respecting the old masters of the Baroque period, such as Caravaggio, Velázquez, and Rembrandt. In specific, Bacchus by Caravaggio has left a meaningful impact on my style and shares aesthetic similarities with Tierno. I tried to emulate the softness in Bacchus' expression and the softness of the atmosphere using lighting. I utilized the Chiaroscuro technique for a high-contrast value scheme. Academia is extremely relevant to my craft, so learning about art history helps inform my work. Tierno also includes elements of my favorite hobbies and pastimes. Beau is accompanied by a fabric draped over his shoulder while he adorns a book tightly to his chest. I intentionally implemented these items as a nod to my passion for fashion/textiles and literature. Fashion gives me immense creativity. Being a portraiture artist, clothes are a critical part of a portrait's identity. I chose a red and yellow pashmina for Beau to bring warmth to his tanned skin. Literature, on the other hand, inspires me to infuse narrative and drama into my pieces. Painting portraits is a language of love to me. The duty to represent someone's personality and complexion accurately can be admittedly daunting; however, I find the act of portraiture to be a valuable form of appreciation and recognition. When painting a portrait, I dedicate hours to a person's features and identity. Reflecting on someone’s individuality and why you care for them truly strengthens relationships. While my style leans realistic, I take creative liberties to abstract certain elements of a painting. A common trope of my work is large, unblended brush strokes. This is best seen in the pashmina, where I paint very loosely to bring flow and energy. It's as if the paint can’t be contained and the flow of colors bleed beyond the pashmina and into the dim background. This is a painterly expression of his personality and how he can fill a room with energy. To conclude, Tierno is introspective at its core. The painting is a blend of love and admiration I have for my partner as well as a look into art history, fashion, and literature. What culminates is a painting uniquely special to my identity and experiences. For me, Tierno exemplifies why I've chosen this difficult path of painting- to find tenderness and passion throughout life.

My name is William Creel and I am a mixed-media artist from North Carolina. Having already received an associate's degree, I am continuing my education at the Maryland Institute College of Art for a Bachelor of Fine Arts. I use a plethora of media including 2D digital animation, illustration, and photography, all of which guide my main pursuit of painting. I mainly concentrate on figurative and anatomical studies with a specific passion for self-portraiture. I use art as a means to investigate myself. Pencils and brushes are my scalpels while my camera is my ultrasound. I use these instruments to understand my identity through insights that words alone cannot convey. This introspective approach allows me to confront and explore the complexities of who I am, bringing to light facets of myself that I might have not had the chance to meet otherwise. Growing up in the American South, my journey was marked by a struggle to find myself In a traditionalist environment. My early expression of self was flamboyant and unconventional. I adored Barbie and wore pink all while despising "boyish" activities like sports and hunting. As I grew older, the tension between my identity and the expectations imposed by my environment became increasingly apparent. This internal conflict reached a crossroads, I had two choices: conform to the traditional norms of the culture around me or embrace exploration and individuality. The choice to pursue identity was not clear-cut. To choose the path of self-expression meant standing firm in my identity despite the social baggage of the South. Art proposed a path forward, offering a means of safely expressing my feelings. In my current work, I implement androgyny and flamboyancy into my narratives, paying homage to my past. These themes and imagery serve as both a tribute to my upbringing and a challenge to the constraints that sought to limit my self-expression. By blending these elements, I create a visual dialogue that reflects my journey from a place of repression to one of self-empowerment. This experience has turned what I once thought was a flaw within myself into a potent, captivating painting style. Each piece I create is a step further along the path of honing and articulating my voice and its intricacies. Looking ahead, my goal is to continue leveraging my artistic practice as a means of both personal exploration and social commentary. I want to build large-scale oil paintings and expand the size and power of relatability. I am dedicated to exploring how my work can contribute to broader conversations about identity, representation, and acceptance. More specifically, I hope to invite other queer Southerners into my paintings, giving them a sense of home and validation through relatability. I am far too familiar with feeling isolated and cut off by my environment. Giving someone a sense of community and even a sense of curiosity to explore their own identity is the impression I want my work to leave.

Plein air painting has a transformative power to change how you view the environment around you. That is not a patch of grass- it's triangular blades of viridian green with a little bit of ultramarine blue. This geometrical breakdown of the world is an oddly edifying and has helped me value the beauty of the world. In my personal life, I often struggle with feeling overwhelmed. I'm a student, like most students, struggling with student loans, stress, and anxiety. I have found that the best way to combat my anxieties is to break things down one step at a time. This is true for when I paint on Plein Air. Admittedly, I get easily overwhelmed when I set up outside to paint a landscape. In this moment when my canvas is white and I start to feel a little panic hit the back of my neck, I always remind myself to start with basic geometrical shapes. I've built this perspective by painting solely with a palette knife. I force myself to simplify what is Infront of me to then better appreciate the details later on. Following this simple rule has allowed me to be fully enveloped in nature. Simple shapes have also allowed me to capture the fleeting moments that nature has to offer. Clouds slowly being pushed, birds departing from their nests, and light briefly hitting a patch of grass through tree leaves. Painting outside has made me have to focus on these ephemeral aspects of nature, making me value things as they come and go. Painting on Plein Air has inspired me to be more thoughtful of the world around me, as a painter and as I grow into adulthood.

Let's face it, any STEM major would grant me a better shot at a livable income and financial security than being a painter. This is all true; however, I believe that passion and the act of creating hold an unprecedented power of making change in the world. My passion to pursue the arts and become a professional painter has outweighed any doubt or concern I've faced. This love for art has its roots on the beaches of Wilmington, North Carolina, my hometown. Every time I would visit the pier as a youth, I had this uncontrollable sensation of warmth in my body. This warmth manifested itself into an untamed, overflowing sense of inspiration. Carrying a sketchbook and a pen became a requirement anytime I went out; I wanted to capture anything and everything around me. From early on I decided to make it my mission to pursue this love of art. Most of my time in high school was spent homeschooled. This changed when I enrolled in Cape Fear Community College in my Junior year, entering the dual enrollment pathway for fine arts. My time at CFCC was utterly transformative. I graduated high school with over 40 college credits under my belt and a 4.0 GPA. I became an active member of Phi Theta Kappa (honors society), participating in fundraising and volunteering events. On the side, I took up non-visual arts-related passions like fashion club and philosophy club. In my last year at CFCC, I secured the position of philosophy club president, showing my dedication to academia and the pursuit of knowledge. During my last year of CFCC, I focused on honing my craft. I got two paintings into the 2024 Student Art Exhibition at the Wilma Daniels Gallery, with one of the paintings, Effulgence, taking home "Best in Show" out of over 400 applicants. Around the same time, I was hearing back from college applications, getting accepted into Maryland Institute College of Art with a $22,000 annual scholarship. I plan to continue my painting career in Maryland, transferring to the school in Fall 2024. I have shown no signs of stopping since graduation from CFCC. As of recent, I've been accepted into two exhibitions in the state of North Carolina. One exhibition in particular, The Craven Arts Gallery 2024 Exhibition in New Bern is both national and juried. Acceptance into a national juried exhibition has been a landmark in my early artistic pursuits. I will continue to work diligently towards becoming a professional painter, pursuing passion even in the face of doubt. Receiving this scholarship would help me bring a little bit of North Carolina to Maryland, funding my academic future.

There are two important things to know about me: I was homeschooled in the American South and I was a viciously flamboyant queer boy. These clashing facts quickly flagged me as different from my peers. My crossroads between identity and a traditionalist environment started becoming more alarming with age. What formed out of this clash were two options: conform to the rigid state that the South wanted me in or explore what made me different. My mom witnessed me and my sisters struggle to make friends, so she enrolled us in local homeschooling groups. Living in the South, every homeschool co-op, group, or event was marketed for Christian families. Most parents took their kids out of the school system to further pursue the religious beliefs that they felt that public schools had long strayed away from. The co-ops I attended consisted of families with heavy conservative, fundamentalist values, and occasionally the conspiracist family that lived on the fringes of society. There was a looming fear of indoctrination even after being far removed from public school. Whenever a new family brings in differing values, the flock of homeschooling mothers would be quick to set off a forest fire of petty drama. With this in mind, I knew my inner fascination with femininity and flamboyance made me an active hand grenade. An explosion of condemnation and gossipy whispers could go off at any moment. This dichotomy set a deep fear within me, ultimately creating an expectation for me to mask my identity. This expectation bled deep into my middle school and high school years. It became evident that I had something ugly and threatening within me. I liken this fear to aliens. In all honesty, the alien inside of me was harrowing. I didn’t know what to make of it; I knew I had something that would make the grown adults around me revolt. However, I realized that my ticket to confronting that alien was through artistic expression and storytelling. Pencils and brushes are my scalpels and my camera is my ultrasound. I express myself through 2D digital animation, painting, and photography, all of which evolved from my early passion for illustration and comics. I was at the height of my comic craze during the pandemic. At first, I delved into creating eccentric characters, constructing bizarre worlds, and designing fictional comic covers. Relying on my sketchbooks as a place of solace during the insurmountable alone time I had was a transformative experience. It influenced and reshaped my art's subject matter for the best, making me look inward. The world I built would begin to reflect my emotional state and my identity would start to show. Specifically, my art started leaning toward queer themes of flamboyancy and androgyny. I started bringing to life characters that transcended traditional gender labels and created worlds devoid of the societal boundaries I witnessed in the South. I realized through art that being a queer boy left a stain on my identity that I would never want to get rid of. I have found that self-acceptance can be hard to find in the face of condemnation, but pivotal to find nevertheless. In creating visual art, I want to set an example of exploring what identity means by using unconventional methods. By doing this, I believe I will inspire others, especially people in the queer community, to find alternative ways of expressing themselves. This pursuit for individuality, creativity, and uniqueness even in the midst of condemnation will lead to a creative and accepting environment.

Pencils and brushes are my scalpels while my camera is my ultrasound. When I sit down with a blank canvas, I prepare as a self-performing surgeon would. I put on gloves, cutting into the most sensitive parts of myself. As a queer boy growing up in the American South I grappled with feelings of isolation and marginalization, navigating a social landscape that often felt unwelcoming and hostile towards individuals like me. I painted my nails, grew my hair long, and wore skirts, earrings, and scarves. I spent my early academic career homeschooled. Living in the South, every homeschool co-op, group, or event was marketed for conservative religious families. Most parents took their kids out of the school system to further pursue the religious beliefs that they felt that public schools had long strayed away from. Marked by both condemnation and personal exploration, this outsider experience has undoubtedly shaped how I approach my artistic practice. An almost daily experience of ostracization has made me acutely aware of my difference. As I grew older, however, I learned how to channel the condemnation into visceral, thought-provoking art pieces. My work has become a vehicle for exploring my complex identity, for giving voice to the silenced narratives of queer Southerners. my art includes religious imagery contrasted by themes of androgyny and flamboyancy. In creating these scenes, I want to set an example of exploring what identity means by using unconventional methods. By doing this, I hope to inspire others, especially people in the queer community, to find alternative ways of expressing themselves. This pursuit for individuality, creativity, and uniqueness even in the midst of condemnation will lead to a creative and accepting environment.

My painting “Effulgence” marks a milestone of artistic achievements and exemplifies how I use visual arts as a means of queer self-expression. The painting is done in oil on linen canvas, taking roughly 40 hours to complete. The painting is ephemeral, with an undertone of religious text. These ties to religious imagery pay homage to art history. I adore artists from the Baroque period like Caravaggio, whose work was primarily centered around biblical stories. I painted Effulgence as a contemporary commentary on religious art, while also sharing my experience as a genderqueer person in the deep South. People often mistake Effulgence as a portrait of the Holy Mary, but it is actually a self-portrait. The decision to veil myself in the self-portrait mirrors my experience of veiling my gender identity. As a queer person growing up in the American South, I grappled with feelings of isolation and marginalization, navigating a social landscape that often felt unwelcoming and hostile towards individuals like me. With Effulgence I was invited to my first-ever exhibition, simultaneously taking home “Best in Show”. I was beyond ecstatic that such a personal, tender story about my struggle with Identity was appreciated as much as it was. Taking home the title of “Best in Show” was a reminder that visual arts can help create a more affirming, welcoming future for outsider voices.