Tom Christophersen is a member of the Beautiful Bizarre Artist Directory
Tom Christophersen is a Sydney based, non-binary, Queer performer and visual artist who is as petrified of beautiful things and death as much as they are transfixed by them. It is primarily the car crashing of these two themes which permeate the surrealistic, often dark portraits and films that they make.
Tom works almost exclusively on watercolour paper and creates mixed media works which comprise elements of drawing and painting to produce highly rendered, tonally realistic but slightly illustrative figurative works.
They also perform and creates video works which often are extensions or elaborations of the characters or settings seen within his portraiture.
Tom Christophersen’s work usually takes the form of portraiture to discuss notions of persona, identity and self. Tom’s artistic intention has always been to make images that create the necessary disturbances in order to provoke permanent, positive change.
Fable and myth feature heavily in Tom’s work. Familiar characters and riffs on well-known figures in fairytale stories are often featured to discuss notions of self-representation and Queer identity. Juxtaposing these beloved and often historical characters with modern notions of the Queer self is a device he uses to unpack his own lived experiences.
Persona, drag and performance are themes which seem to creep into the form and composition of their portraiture. Tom is obsessed with transforming and enjoys creating characters which can inhabit the strange, liminal spaces he creates within his artworks. Depicting these bizarre figures using traditional methods of painting and drawing which are highly detailed seem to help lure unsuspecting viewers into worlds which can be unsettling and strange, albeit beautiful.
Documenting Queer makers, the Queer community and various LGBTQIA+ issues and moments within the Queer timeline is a really crucial part of Tom’s work. Representing members of their community who Tom thinks need to be spotlighted is a spiritual function of his practice.
Celebrity and ritual seem to feature repeatedly in Tom’s work. Cross pollinating his work with cultural high and ‘low’ figures means that his portraiture spans many different types of people both within the public eye and or from his own life. Exposing the cruelty, ritual and absurdity of celebrity culture using people they love. Visual art is something he enjoys experimenting with whilst creating work to live within gallery environments.
I aim to bring focus back to portraiture that is of a level of detail it demands an intimate level of engagement from the viewer. I hope my traditional, technical approach to drawing and painting can provide a fresh, immediate offering to portraiture and indeed representation of the self. The figures and themes within my work are often autobiographical and based on real life experiences.
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