I N T R O D U C T I O N
"Historically, the occidental visual arts used “imperfect beings,” the disabled, disfigured, or deviant members of society, almost exclusively to represent insanity, sin, or perversion. Among the most famous representations are those of the Spanish painters Velázquez and Goya, who portrayed bearded women, dwarfs, witches, and he decrepit elderly as comic figures or morbidly grotesque; these figures represented the vices and decadence of society.

Today people with handicaps, addictions, or mental illness are blamed for their condition and are excluded in modern art. This project was born when I had the opportunity to meet socially rejected and stigmatized groups through my wife’s work in HIV/AIDS prevention with vulnerable populations. Transvestites, sex workers, and recovering drug addicts working in condom promotion and needle exchange had teamed up to combat the HIV epidemic in their community. Dedication, triumph over addiction, perseverance in the face of prejudice: these were the values of this population commonly characterized as immoral or deviant and represented as unfeeling and depraved. I was inspired to begin painting, and thus re-introducing, the socially rejected.