misterbadger:

“Everyone has their own sense of sexuality or what is beautiful. And for me what is beautiful is something that’s a little odd to the eye. A lot of my work is not that pretty – I think that a lot of it is kind of ugly – even though people think that they’re beautiful images. I like that there’s this dichotomy of the yin and the yang and the positive and the negative rubbing up against each other and creating something new. Because that’s our world. That’s our life, and that’s what makes us who we are. One side isn’t better than the other. I’m a woman born and raised in Camden, New Jersey, the piss hole of New Jersey in many ways. It’s very rough and very poor. But I’m also someone who’s had education, went to some really prestigious schools, and who is well-read, and who has traveled and learned, and that is part of me as well. So I can only put that in my work because it’s an extension of who I am. And that’s what these images are—they’re a representation, an extension of myself. If some of these women look a little harsh that’s fine with me, because there are some of them who don’t. They’re all educated women themselves and they love playing these roles with me. Now I’m working with women who are transgendered men – women who were men earlier in their lives—and I’m interested in those ideas of artifice, and change, and what’s real, and experience, and the frailty of beauty.” (Via A Sky Filled with Shooting Stars)

Mickalene Thomas, Le déjeuner sur l’herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires, 2010.