Hannah McBroom first fell in love with painting as a college student at Mississippi State University.
"I really latched on to painting because it was so fluid and messy and kind of sexy," she described. "I would come out of my classes covered in paint."
A 2019 student recipient of an Artists 360 grant from the Mid-American Arts Alliance, McBroom graduates with a Master of Fine Arts in painting from the University of Arkansas School of Art this May.
A painter whose work explores themes of transgender identity, materiality, alienation and the body, she experienced an aha moment while on a trip to Art Basel, a premiere trade show in Miami, Fla.
She experienced the art of Devan Shimoyama, who documents his own experience as a black queer artist.
"I was like oh I don't have to paint the body in this very traditional way where everything is in place--where there's this classical sense of light hitting the forms and flesh," she described.
"I think one of the things missing from the show was that perspective of how trans bodies need to be represented and not put into these patriarchal traditional standard of quote unquote normal bodies."
Listen to the full KUAF Arts Beat conversation in the on-demand streaming link above.
