Jonathan Virginia Green

he/him jonathanvirginiagreen.com

Jonathan Virginia Green is a visual artist from Tulsa, Oklahoma. He uses his work to explore mechanisms of desire, pleasure, and transformation that are oriented within a queer/transgender experience. His most recent works reference leathersexuality (an umbrella term for subcultural practices relating to kink or BDSM) and explore its similarities to painting. As practices, they are driven by aesthetics, invested in material, and can be vehicles for exploring other psychological states. The paintings reference performances where Green engages in activities that are rooted in leather fantasies. This typically involves the artist adorning himself in rubber masks, latex suits, or other gear to take on an alternative mode of being. Within the work, he searches to depict a moment of transition within a scene, of becoming something else. These practices are especially valuable to the artist as a transmasculine person because they allow for an experience of the body, of sexuality, that is not centered on the genitals.