Life & Work with Gwyneth Bulawsky

Today we’d like to introduce you to Gwyneth Bulawsky.

Hi Gwyneth, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I asked my mother to rename me as a woman when our house was incinerated by a massive fire six years ago. My whole identity as a boy-pictures, home videos, childhood paintings-along with everything my family owned, had burned to the ground in one night. The trauma of losing everything triggered a complete awakening. Up until that point, I spent my life suppressing my true identity. There had been failed attempts to transition, but I had never been able to fully come out. After the fire, I had a revelation: I could emerge from this tragedy as my authentic self and decided to medically transition. As part of the healing process, shortly after the devastation I rediscovered my love of painting and returned to school to receive a Bachelor of Art from UCLA. This insanely traumatic experience had set in motion my painting practice. I was able to start working out past trauma through my art and had started producing paintings that demanded space in this world for the transgender community.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
I think my life has been challenging to say the least. I think not having access to resources and transgender healthcare had made my upbringing quite difficult. I was harassed and never really was able to fit in. I spent most of my childhood drawing in my room. It was a subconscious escapism from a community that hadn’t had enough education to understand me. I have people reach out to me now on Instagram and tell me that I’ve given them the courage to come out, that my openness has inspired them to let go of the baggage they carried from their past. I love those messages. It’s funny because I look at the success I’ve had in just this short amount of time and I think the negativity of my past is now overshadowed by the amazing good that has come from just literally being myself. I think happiness is contagious and is something that my community could use a lot of lately and I feel like I’m contributing to my community by creating work centered around our experiences.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I currently have two different ongoing projects. I paint cityscapes documenting my time in Los Angeles, it started out as a way to deal with the isolation during lockdown and then I think ultimately was a way to document me taking up space as a trans person, that I existed in these moments, I think these cityscapes help support my more conceptual works by documenting the physicality of my experience, while also creating a body of work that reflects my personal experience as a trans woman that explore more deeply interpersonal relationships, intimacy, body issues, and the abuse of men towards trans women via classic Americana cartoons as a commentary on the immaturity of contemporary, heteronormative audiences. I think I spend a lot of my time trying to relate to people and I think in a way I try to trick the viewer into approaching my paintings by the familiarity of this classic cartoon style and bright colors. Its then that they quickly realize the tone of work is controversial, it deals a lot with the objectification of the trans body and our struggles to break away from the exploitation of our bodies and in the end, we are just like everyone else, having a human experience and wanting to love and be loved.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
I think there are a core group of women that have helped me so much along the way. My high school art teacher Betha Maclain gave me the support and safe space I needed as a teen. My professor at LACC Professor Alex Weisenfeld was my biggest advocate in helping me through the darkest of days in my early transition and my return to school. I highly recommend her as a professor at LACC, she is seriously the most inspiring and kind person I’ve met in Los Angeles. My friend Madison Fairchild helped me with my legal name change and just kinda took me under her wing and showed me how to toughen up. God, there’s honestly a lot of people I hold dear to my heart. Probably my mom the most. She honestly tried the best she knew with the knowledge she had, it was not easy raising me! As a way to include her I wanted her to rename me as a woman and I think that’s so cool. I haven’t heard of any other trans people doing that, so maybe I started something?

Contact Info:

• Website: Gwynethbulawsky.com
• Instagram: @gwynethbulawsky

Image Credits
Jordan Service