Mark Aguhar

Region: West

My work is about being queer. I have no political agenda; I do not want to enlighten anybody; I desire no approval; I just want to exist as a queer. I gather source material from my own experience of growing up gay through the Internet, collecting gay ephemera to inform my drawings. I take particular advantage of the glut of social networking sites. Facebook, Yumblr, Twitter, DList, AIM, Craigslist—I use these electronic communication methods to form relationships in a way that portrait artists of another era used sittings with their subjects. The people I choose to draw are the people to whom I feel honestly connected. The visual simplicity of my drawings belies the careful consideration taken for each element. My work is playful, beautiful, sexy, stupid, funny, gross, and cute all at once, but I most earnestly want to convey realness.

Appearances