Artist Profile: Rae Senarighi

Rae Senarighi / AKA Transpainter is your average non-binary cancer survivor inspiring self-compassion, activism and gender resilience via unapologetic portraiture and typography. Currently residing in Madison, WI, Rae champions storytelling through art, working to create accurate and celebratory representation of the transgender and non-binary community in the fine art world and beyond. He is on a mission to spread self-acceptance and love, as is evident in his portraiture, typography and speaking engagements. Rae believes that trust and self-love are vital to the journey of understanding and accepting his own identity, hoping to remind others to not only love themselves, but to celebrate and lift up their respective communities. Rae’s work has been featured internationally through media and news outlets, including Netflix and GLAAD, DNA India and more. He has toured with his art to ten states and 17 different locations and counting.

1) What are the challenges and triumphs you have experienced in regard to being able to market your work as a professional artist?

Honestly, it’s been a long and winding road for me to get to a place where I feel confident in what I’m doing and feel like I know how to market myself as an artist. And even now, that still shifts. In my early 20’s I made a lot of art but didn’t really sell much of it, even though I had some art showings. When I went back to school for a BFA in graphic design, I got really into it and pursued my commercial art career pretty much exclusively for about 10 years. It wasn’t until I survived cancer that I got a fire lit under me to create fine art again.

For a long time I felt like I was “supposed” to be making fine art / doing something else. But I’m now grateful for my commercial art career because it has allowed me the freedom to make fine art that I don’t care if anyone ever buys. Surviving cancer, I made a commitment to make my art practice a sincere and regular practice in my life. So I have this practice that I hold dearly and protect my time in my art studio. But I don’t have the pressure of having to pay my bills from it.

I really love my commercial art career. I’m good at it. I enjoy helping folks visually communicate better. But it’s also a good compliment to my fine art. I can make my own websites and swag easily, etc.

My big break in the fine art world came when I had just created my first portrait series, “Transcend” (a series of larger than life portraits, mostly 5ft tall, waist up, of transgender and nonbinary people from around the world). I had been posting regularly on Instagram and Netflix invited me to do a portrait series for a small project of theirs called “First Time I Saw Me, Trans Voices”.

Having the backing of a Netflix video to show people what I do has been nothing short of amazing and has lent me a lot of credibility. I feel so grateful to this day that I was able to be a part of something like that.

Ever since, I have really been trying to figure out what kinds of paid opportunities I want to take on, finding out some that I’m not so into and others that I want to do more of helps me fine tune my marketing efforts. It’s been a learning process for sure.

2) Which of the following words accurately reflect themes you have explored creatively: 'dialogue,' 'disrupt' or 'decolonize'?

With all of the work that I do, I think “dialogue” is something nearly always on my mind. Whether it’s my portraiture work or my typography work, I am interested in having a larger dialogue with my viewers. For the typography, I’m often making a statement about trans rights. I want people to see the words and walk away with a better understanding of who we are and what our movement is doing. For my portraiture work, I expressly want folks to continue this dialogue when they leave. I always paint folks who have a social media presence and who are living their lives while also expressing themselves in some way online. Therefore I don’t provide bios next to my portraits of them, but instead list their name (as they’d like it listed), where they are from (some folks list where they live now; others list their birthplace) and their Instagram handle. Because I don’t believe it’s my job to attempt to tell their stories for them, nor do I believe I could accurately do so. Some of these folks are going through intentional changes and a bio from a year ago or more might not even be remotely accurate any longer. So I encourage the viewer to follow the portrait subjects to learn their stories from them directly.

A modern dancer might be revealing their story through dance clips. A poet might post clips of a recent performance. An athlete might be talking about trans people in sports and their experiences around what that’s been like for them. There are so many stories out there that are not mine to tell. I feel like my paintings are an introduction, then once I’ve made that introduction, I can get out of the way so that dialogue may continue.

3) Any work or projects you are looking forward to pursuing this year?

I am in the middle of a large commission right now I’m excited about. It’s for a gender studies center at a university and it’s of three powerful leaders. Painting people who are so powerful plus so well known is equally intimidating and exciting. My only hope is if they ever saw the painting, these individuals would feel seen and well represented.
4) Fave installation, exhibition, writing &/or performance by another artist that you've recently encountered?

Acclaimed gender non-conforming author, poet and speaker Alok V Menon (@alokvmenon on Instagram) was recently on the “Man Enough” Podcast. It’s brilliant and will blow your mind. Please look it up and take a listen. In a conversation filled with wisdom, historical insight, in addition to a whole lot of love and grace, ALOK talks openly about their story; their movement to #DeGenderFashion; and they challenge folks to get to know who we are outside of who we have been told we should be.