finding strength in femininity

welcome to issue #13 of moments, our bi-weekly newsletter. if you’re new here, this is the space where we share product updates, highlights from our community, and a curation of our favorite moments.

on behalf of all of us, happy pride month! primitives has and always will be a space for creators of all backgrounds and identities to find community and we’re honored to celebrate all of the incredible lgbtqia+ creators & collectors on primitives.

our featured creator this week is painter, photographer, and all-around creative chris o’leary (@chrisolearyart). his work is nuanced and imbued with personal meaning, tying in deeply to his identity and explorations around femininity. chris was kind enough to sit down with us to chat more about his artistic practice, how he uses creativity as therapeutic outlet, and creating a legacy for the lgbtqia+ community through his work.

tell us about yourself - where are you from? what sparked your creative spirit?

i’m from the south shore of long island. i lived in new york city in the 90s and early 2000s, which was fantastic. and i'm currently in west virginia. i miss the city, but i think this is more my speed at this point.

i didn't necessarily grow up in a creative household. i have an irish catholic background and am the youngest of seven children. i was raised by very traditional parents in that sense. so my creativity started very young. i looked for outlets to explore who I was as a feminine child.

you can guess i wasn’t allowed to play with dolls, but i started making dolls out of shoelaces which I called string people. they were all girls by the way – you can see that inspiration in some of my moments. i had an army of them and they evolved throughout my childhood. they were probably the first creative outlet that i used as a therapy, learning a bit of defiance to keep true to myself very early on.

what inspires you?

i value the strength of femininity — an abstracted version of it. being biologically male and growing up as i did, in a society where femininity in men is considered bad, i grappled with seeing femininity as a strength. i was exposed to it through tv, film, music, etc. and was always inspired by strong women. i loved joan collins on dynasty and debbie harry from blondie, the solid gold dancers on tv. i saw these women as powerful and elegant which is something i emulated. and in the late 80s i started loving fashion, photography, and magazines as well.

i just grew as an artist from there. i'm still trying to define who i am through my paintings and pictures — i can see they used to be harder and now they're getting softer as i get older. so i'm figuring it out. it's a strange thing, it's this process of growth coupled with problem solving.

what three adjectives would you use to describe your work?

i would say: invasive, threatening and elegant. i like faces that fill the canvas so they can challenge you as the viewer.

what does being a creator mean to you?

it’s almost a therapy. creating gives me permission to work things out of my head and in my life by putting in into the canvas. it also gives me permission to evolve and to make mistakes, not just in terms of art, but more so in navigating life itself.

what's your goal in creating and selling your work?

very simply, to be heard. i want to have a voice and be able to leave a legacy for something, whether it's helping someone going through something that's similar to what i'm going through, or something else. i think i have been looking to break down the mold of masculine/feminine, man/woman but still have not pinpointed the exact goal.

i want anyone who owns my work to love the piece. but way, way underneath that, i want buyers to look at them and feel powerful. like these images will be the permission my audience needs to go ahead and to rule the world.

did you have any experience with nfts prior to finding primitives?

briefly about a year and a half ago, but i still didn't get what i was doing, how it really worked, if i could have a physical piece of an nft…. i didn't even know enough to ask these things at the time, so i fell off the radar until i found you guys.

the fact that [the primitives team] suggested we have a conversation so i could see you face to face made me comfortable and excited about this. it was a very personal interaction.

want to read our whole conversation with chris? head over to our blog to keep reading.

we’ve been heads down putting the finishing touches on one of our biggest product launches yet. hint: it’s all about 💸💸💸

what else should you know about? a few recent updates:

• new landing page! 💻 – our main website got a huge upgrade :) we’re so excited about our landing page doing a much better job of telling our story as we work on becoming the best digital home for creators and collectors – check it out!

• onboarding experience 👋 – when you join primitives, we now welcome you with a personalized list of moments to collect and creators to follow. invite a friend to experience it :) thanks to johnny for launching this!

• sms login 📲 – ditch your email. now you can login to primitives with your phone number — it’s stupid fast! s/o to ricardo and paul on our team for their work on this

our community continues to mint incredible content on primitives. a few of our favorites from the past week include film photography, abstracted video, a painted portrait, and mixed-media collage.