This piece is born from the lineage I carry: the fairground I grew up on, the travelling show people, the performers, the misfits, and those who are othered.

My great-grandmother was a trapeze artist in the circus and later a “freak” in the sideshows of the fairgrounds, she told fortune’s and weaved gold, preserving a way of life that had always been under threat, much like many peoples’ identities are today.

The bodies I have painted here are raw, distorted, and alive, part performer, and very much on show.

I share this art for anyone who has ever felt like the outsider, the one too much, too strange, or too feeling. The ones who were told they didn’t fit. Here, difference becomes power, vulnerability becomes rebellion, and what was once hidden becomes holy.

This piece of art was created in a time within a wider body of art exploring similar themes.