still
A desert rite of passage. No audience. No applause. Just you and the wilderness.
Each figure and cactus starts as a real photograph, then gets flattened, reassembled, reimagined—cut paper meets digital daydream, with a nod to Matisse and a heart full of sun.
As the desert takes hold, the body shifts. The cacti stop being background—they become witness, family, gatekeeper. But the real shift happens inside. Out here, there’s no script. No timeline. No checklist. As gay men, we don’t inherit the regiments of straight life: college, marriage, children, retirement. We get to say yes or no to every part. That freedom can feel like chaos. Or it can feel like grace.
For me, it was freeing. The desert didn’t ask me to perform; it asked me to choose. To listen. To decide what kind of man I wanted to be, and what kind of silence I could live with. Still is about that moment. The pause before the answer. The quiet where the real self starts to speak.
