Monsters in the Bedroom, 2025

Acrylics on canvas

Sometimes while creating fantasy art, you can actively engage with a theme without even noticing it. That’s how it began for me with monsters. I was creating more and more inhuman characters, who lived secret double lives and could only exist in their true forms within hidden communities. And who were, consequently, often bisexual and non-binary. My characters were monstrous, and they were queer, and when I looked at the two side by side I realised they were, to a large extent, the same thing. That to be a monster means to be dejected and to deject everything deemed natural, and to be queer means to evoke (at least in some people) repulsion and apprehension. And somewhere on the fringes of socially acceptable, these two lifeforms meet and become one. The queer and the monster. The monster and the queer. “Monsters in the Bedroom” is a figurative fantasy painting which explores the connections between queer identity and monsters, and at its core celebrates love in all forms. Fantasy artwork. Complete painting process