Ronald Solano
Imagery Identity and Culture
Self Portrait
April 26, 2019
I am Ronald Yeovane Solano Zamora and I am a Latino gay man. Some points of my identity are I’m a Leo, an artist, designer, gay, and Latino. For my self-portrait I have done a painting of myself and my experience. This painting represents the struggle to find security in my identity. I spent a lot of my life pretending to be somebody else so everyone around me could be comfortable, I made the painting feel very rudimentary to reflect the childlike ignorance and denial I was facing for years.
The portrait of me is cut in half to represent a split in my identity to showcase the struggle of trying to live two lives. The figure on the bottom right of the painting is a picture of me that I took at around 2 AM when I was in the bathroom. I used to feel this need to contort my body in different manners at one point in my life, I didn’t think I did this because I just needed to stretch but I felt that I needed to do this because I wanted to extend myself. I wanted to go past my level of being comfortable, I felt like there was a part of me that was hidden. A part of me that wasn’t able to express itself and so those feelings translated itself to stretching and looking at myself in the mirror while doing so.
The bottom left corner represents an abstracted turtle shell to represent the nickname I was given in fourth grade. I originally got this nickname for being shy and hiding in my shirt, I thought that nickname would dissolve once I began being more social but I was wrong. That name represented a majority of my life so far, except in this case it was a closet I was stuck in. The pink background represents the color of the sky on the day I came out. The day I came out I saw a double rainbow and the sky was pink and purple and you could smell the scent of the wet ground.
I’m someone who loves nature and seeing this sight at the time when I felt so lost was inspiring, it was so beautiful that It inspired me to come out. The four boxes on the top right of the screen represent the stages of life I’ve been through, I believe I’m in the fourth stage of my life right now. The first square represents my childlike ignorance to the world, the second represents disappointment, the third represents an adjustment period and the fourth represents the balance I feel within myself now. I have one eye opening in my portrait because it represents how I’m slowly being able to see the world as my real self now, I don’t have both eyes open because I’m not there yet but I’m still getting there. I’ve been influenced by the “The Gay History of America’s Classic Children’s Books” article, after reading it I started looking through my childhood and my thoughts as a child.
That's why I painted the portrait in bright colors and made the painting look somewhat unfinished, that’s why a lot of the forms are abstracted and quick. I was also inspired by the “RuPaul: ‘Drag is a big f-you to male-dominated culture”, it influenced me more in the aspect of showing me contort my body in the painting. When I contort my body and look at myself in the mirror it reminds me of a performance just like what they do in Drag Race. I haven’t really been influenced by artists in general besides maybe going with portraiture and painting the nose red
Imagery Identity and Culture
Self Portrait
April 26, 2019
I am Ronald Yeovane Solano Zamora and I am a Latino gay man. Some points of my identity are I’m a Leo, an artist, designer, gay, and Latino. For my self-portrait I have done a painting of myself and my experience. This painting represents the struggle to find security in my identity. I spent a lot of my life pretending to be somebody else so everyone around me could be comfortable, I made the painting feel very rudimentary to reflect the childlike ignorance and denial I was facing for years.
The portrait of me is cut in half to represent a split in my identity to showcase the struggle of trying to live two lives. The figure on the bottom right of the painting is a picture of me that I took at around 2 AM when I was in the bathroom. I used to feel this need to contort my body in different manners at one point in my life, I didn’t think I did this because I just needed to stretch but I felt that I needed to do this because I wanted to extend myself. I wanted to go past my level of being comfortable, I felt like there was a part of me that was hidden. A part of me that wasn’t able to express itself and so those feelings translated itself to stretching and looking at myself in the mirror while doing so.
The bottom left corner represents an abstracted turtle shell to represent the nickname I was given in fourth grade. I originally got this nickname for being shy and hiding in my shirt, I thought that nickname would dissolve once I began being more social but I was wrong. That name represented a majority of my life so far, except in this case it was a closet I was stuck in. The pink background represents the color of the sky on the day I came out. The day I came out I saw a double rainbow and the sky was pink and purple and you could smell the scent of the wet ground.
I’m someone who loves nature and seeing this sight at the time when I felt so lost was inspiring, it was so beautiful that It inspired me to come out. The four boxes on the top right of the screen represent the stages of life I’ve been through, I believe I’m in the fourth stage of my life right now. The first square represents my childlike ignorance to the world, the second represents disappointment, the third represents an adjustment period and the fourth represents the balance I feel within myself now. I have one eye opening in my portrait because it represents how I’m slowly being able to see the world as my real self now, I don’t have both eyes open because I’m not there yet but I’m still getting there. I’ve been influenced by the “The Gay History of America’s Classic Children’s Books” article, after reading it I started looking through my childhood and my thoughts as a child.
That's why I painted the portrait in bright colors and made the painting look somewhat unfinished, that’s why a lot of the forms are abstracted and quick. I was also inspired by the “RuPaul: ‘Drag is a big f-you to male-dominated culture”, it influenced me more in the aspect of showing me contort my body in the painting. When I contort my body and look at myself in the mirror it reminds me of a performance just like what they do in Drag Race. I haven’t really been influenced by artists in general besides maybe going with portraiture and painting the nose red
in human portraits, that’s influenced by my favorite artist Davide Cambria. I paint the noses red like in my self-portrait to represent the human feelings and the things that you can’t control from your body that just reveal themselves no longer how hard you try to stop it. It’s like my struggle with sexuality and how I wanted to prevent any aspect of it show in my character.
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