Painted from a glamorous photo by Hélène Cyr 

UPDATE 2024: JIMBO IS A BIG STAR!

November 2020

Jimbo is a Victoria, BC drag clown. His star is rising as a result of being a contestant on the first season of Canada's Drag Race this year, but Jimbo has always been a star—sweet, unique, super creative, hard-working, and funny as hell. Jimbo is a designer, a sewer, an artist, a singer, a comedian, and more clown than queen. A clown being someone who is a conduit for the audience, picking up what they're putting down and embodying what's happening in the moment. This is not lip-syncing, my friends.

These are my thoughts, but I suspect Jimbo would agree. He stood out by a country mile on Canada's Drag Race and was the undisputed fan favourite, making it to fourth place on the show. There was collective outrage that he wasn't in the top three. OUTRAGE I TELL YOU!

This portrait engendered the least agonizing of any I've painted so far, much to my relief. Maybe I've reached a certain level of ease. But I also felt inspired by Jimbo and felt a lot of love for him as I painted, which seemed to carry me along. Take a look at a wonderful mini-doc about Jimbo made by Nice Lady Productions. I've watched this short film many times and I always get a little weepy when he says "I didn't feel free to be myself for so long... now I feel doubly free". As someone who grew up feeling like a freak for no good goddamn reason other than, well, I was one, I relate to this very hard. Jimbo is unapologetically Jimbo, and clearly an inspiration to hundreds of thousands who take courage from his example.

The only area I laboured over was the hand holding the cigarette, but even that I managed to keep a sense of humour about. A hand with a lit cigarette, a chunky topaz ring in shadow with a glint of light on it, and glittery nail polish. Let's see you paint THAT in ink. As I painted I kept calling out, "grisly man-hand! Grisly man-hand!", but I grew to embrace it. I now believe that it's as it should be.

Grisly man hand! Grisly man hand!

The Jimbo notes. Once I've reached a certain point in the portrait, I start to jot down "problem areas" that jump out at me, or things I don't want to forget to attend to. Nipples are important.