Posted by:
MJ
(
)
Date: October 24, 2010 06:19PM
OK, I would have liked the display to be about 4 times larger. I wanted to see more and went thought the whole exhibit a second time then returned to particular pieces a third time to study more closely.
Here is some more detail on his life from Q-Salt Lake.
http://qsaltlake.com/2010/09/16/trevor-southeys-oxymoronic-life-on-display/Trevor received two art degrees from BYU and eventually became an instructor at BYU where he began the Mormon Arts and Belief movement. There are at least 3 pieces on loan from BYU in the exhibit including nudes, the males genitalia only hinted at with no detail what so ever.
His early work was beautiful and fascinating but I never really related to most of the characters as human. With the exception of a self portrait and the portraits of his mother and father, the other paintings of humans came across more as a caricature than as human with emotions.
That all changed after Trevor came out as gay in 1981, got divorced, got fired from BYU, excommunicated from TSCC and moved to San Francisco bay area (how gay is THAT?).
After Trevor came out, male genitalia had detail, but more than that, his characters both male and female seemed to have a sole. One piece in particular, a sketchy portrait of a man felt like it was looking right into my heart. It seems that leaving the LDS church allowed Trevor to be far more expressive of the human form than he could as a Mormon.