OUTLAWS IN LOVE BOOK

OUTLAWS IN LOVE is the first chapter of my thirteen-part art project, DICKSCOVERIES. Created between 2023 and 2026, this 6x9” softcover book spans over 100 monochrome pages of artwork, poetry, photography, and creative collaborations.

In this chapter, I center erotic yet domesticated cowboys living in intimate Western spaces. Rather than portraying the cowboy as hardened or emotionally distant, I depict him as tender, vulnerable, and deeply human. The work draws from my early years growing up in Wyoming and reflects on what queerness looked like and often quietly felt like in the rural American West during the early 1990s.

This body of work has been awarded Best in Show at the 2024 Art of Long Beach Pride and Best in Show at the 2026 Art of San Diego Pride. I was a featured artist at the Tom of Finland Arts & Culture Festival from 2022–2025, and my work has been formally collected into the permanent archive of the Tom of Finland Foundation. Pieces from the series were finalists in the 2025 Dandyland International Erotic Art Exhibition and have been featured in the 18th edition of Starfuckerr Magazine, Jeremy Lucido’s DTLA Hogtied at Precinct in Los Angeles, and Ed West’s Neon Rainbows in Austin, Texas.

Published at the 250th anniversary of the United States, OUTLAWS IN LOVE challenges the country’s most enduring Western myth at a time of collective self-examination. The series draws from my experience growing up queer in a culture shaped by homophobia and emotional repression, where survival often meant concealment. Through erotic and tender imagery, I confront the mental health toll of that silence and reimagine the cowboy as emotionally present and unapologetically queer. In doing so, the work reframes American freedom as the ability to love openly, live honestly, and reclaim one’s narrative.