This painting commission is for $500 per painting until 10 artists are selected. The commission is intended to start a conversation on the exclusionary discriminatory economic apartheid housing policy of San Francisco’s Castro District neighborhood. This first conversation, it is hoped, will start a second conversation on the most effective way to dismantle and bring down the iron-clad exclusionary discriminatory housing policies of San Francisco’s gay Castro District neighborhood.
The paintings will be entitled ‘Creeper Society’ and will show a successful gay couple standing in front of their Range Rover or Mercedes Benz that is parked in front of their Castro District Victorian home. Of course the couple is living in a Castro District Victorian mansion either because of inheritance ‘success’ or carreer ‘success’. But that is not the type of success that this commission is focusing on. The ‘success’ that this commission is focusing on is ‘success’ at excluding. Just as the National Socialist Workers’ party of Germany was ‘successful’ at excluding Jews and the Apartheidists of South Africa were ‘successful’ at excluding Blacks, Castrocreeper society has worked very hard at and has been very successful in excluding lower and middle income gays from the Castro District. But battles were fought and both the National Socialists of Germany and the Apartheidists of South Africa were defeated. It is my hope that this commission will begin a battle that will successfully defeat Castrocreeper society.
At the top of the painting, maybe above the garage to the left, is a rendering of Mathew Shepherd tied to a barbed wire fence being beaten to death. The two men beating Mathew Shepherd to death look exactly like and are wearing clothing that is exactly like the clothing being worn by the gay couple standing preening in front of their Victorian home. At the top of the painting, perhaps in the clouds to the right, is a vignette of Matthew Shepherd and a boyfriend looking out the window of a multistory apartment building in the Castro, a building that would have saved Matthew Shepherd’s life, but a building that the exclusionary discriminatory Castro District homeowners would never allow in “their” neighborhood as it would not be in line with the strict economic apartheid policies of “their” exclusionary discriminatory neighborhood. The artist may include other symbolic allegorical features in keeping with the theme I have outlined above.
This allegorical symbolic painting is meant to underscore the fact that the Castro District gay community takes the greatest pride in the exclusionary discriminatory nature of their neighborhood and takes the greatest pains to maintain strict economic apartheid in the neighborhood, an economic apartheid system as effective as the former apartheid system of South Africa that was defeated in large part by a worldwide boycott. The painting is also meant to underscore the fact that the 2015 iterations of Mathew are either rejected at the gate of the Castro (and thus condemned to live with the gay-bashing bullies of their home communities) because they are unable to afford the multi-million dollar admission price or expelled from the neighborhood when their rent is increased. As I understand from my study of history, the Jewish ghettos of WWII always found room for more Jews in their ghettos. Why is it that the much more prosperous gay millionaires of the San Francisco Castro District prancing in their Victorian flats cannot do the same?
Painting Commissioned
