Not Being Different, Just Being (Me) is an original painting by Chris Shopland, acrylic and pen on a 14.8 × 20.8 cm deep-edge canvas (3.9 cm).
Created for the Rogue Community Collab Lab Challenge Pretty in Pink, hosted by Rafi and Klee (rafiandklee.com). The brief was to work in monochrome /majority in pink, with some of the prompts including energy and modern identity.
While this idea may feel a little cliché, I kept thinking about how, in internet comment-land, we still have a long way to go. Many people feel free to make snide remarks about anyone who looks or lives differently—especially around how people dress or present themselves. Ideas of what a man or woman “should” be still dominate, and for trans or non-binary people the internet can be especially cruel. It does make you question whether that really reflects the human race or if the internets collective hive mind just amplifies this.
I’m a straight, white, cis male, but also neurodivergent, and I believe anyone—especially those who are different or part of a minority—should be free to be who they are and present themselves without judgement. Are they still minority or is the “norm” of society just pretending they are still the majority? All comes back to that simple idea: if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Yet still scary if theses within people’s minds and it bothers them that much they feel they have t speak up!
I may have subconsciously been thinking of Billy Elliot, particularly the scene where his friend wears dresses and makeup and the two of them are trying on tutu and ballet moves, and this friend later appears confident, unique, and unapologetically himself, later in the film, same person as an adult but knowing themselves more, like with all of us. Whether you fit society’s idea of “normal” or stand out, we should all be able to be unapologetically us.
An image flashed into my head of a bearded hipster in a tutu. Flamingos—naturally pink—followed, along with memories of an LGBTQ+ club called Flamingos. It all spilled out into this image. While difference isn’t always visible on the surface, this felt like a playful, energetic way of showing someone standing on their own two feet and dancing to their own beat.
Not Being Different, Just Being (Me) is an original painting by Chris Shopland, acrylic and pen on a 14.8 × 20.8 cm deep-edge canvas (3.9 cm).
Created for the Rogue Community Collab Lab Challenge Pretty in Pink, hosted by Rafi and Klee (rafiandklee.com). The brief was to work in monochrome /majority in pink, with some of the prompts including energy and modern identity.
While this idea may feel a little cliché, I kept thinking about how, in internet comment-land, we still have a long way to go. Many people feel free to make snide remarks about anyone who looks or lives differently—especially around how people dress or present themselves. Ideas of what a man or woman “should” be still dominate, and for trans or non-binary people the internet can be especially cruel. It does make you question whether that really reflects the human race or if the internets collective hive mind just amplifies this.
I’m a straight, white, cis male, but also neurodivergent, and I believe anyone—especially those who are different or part of a minority—should be free to be who they are and present themselves without judgement. Are they still minority or is the “norm” of society just pretending they are still the majority? All comes back to that simple idea: if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Yet still scary if theses within people’s minds and it bothers them that much they feel they have t speak up!
I may have subconsciously been thinking of Billy Elliot, particularly the scene where his friend wears dresses and makeup and the two of them are trying on tutu and ballet moves, and this friend later appears confident, unique, and unapologetically himself, later in the film, same person as an adult but knowing themselves more, like with all of us. Whether you fit society’s idea of “normal” or stand out, we should all be able to be unapologetically us.
An image flashed into my head of a bearded hipster in a tutu. Flamingos—naturally pink—followed, along with memories of an LGBTQ+ club called Flamingos. It all spilled out into this image. While difference isn’t always visible on the surface, this felt like a playful, energetic way of showing someone standing on their own two feet and dancing to their own beat.
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