Profiles Artist Statement

In rereading my diaries from the 1960s, I am reliving the angst I felt as I confronted my sexuality at a time when the words lesbian and gay were hardly mentioned.

There was an enormous amount of stigma attached to the word homosexual, which was listed as a mental illness by the psychiatric association.

My shame then was visceral and intense.

At the time, I was drawing and painting frontal faces. In diary notations, I wrote: Some of these faces I am drawing look back at me with disdain, even disgust. I need to make sure they can’t see me. I have to leave the eyes out altogether and begin just below the eyes.

Was I averting the gaze, as we say in today’s lingo––the gaze of my own drawings and paintings staring critically back at me? I had to be sure that none of these faces had the means to see me, this me that was so very bad.

I told this story during a 16-minute talk at a webinar for Penn State Lehigh Valley on April 8, 2021. The full-hour webinar includes my 16-minute talk and a Q&A.

© Linda Stein, 2021