Dawn Brayford, Artist. Painting title: Word Searching

Commentary:
This painting is about how other people look back on your life and revise their ideas about you when you come out as gay. The painting is of myself as a child on a merry-go-round, I am around 5 years old. Interlaced with the image is a word square containing around 20 words that are commonly used to describe lesbians such as 'dyke' and 'lezzie' amongst others which are not too pleasant. I found that when I came out, people who had known me since I was a child suddenly reacted to me in a different way, looked back on times we spent together and changed their memories to fit in with this new information, especially family members who can now see things in my childhood that 'meant' that I was gay, but never saw any relevance in before. It is also about the double standard, no-one would dream of calling a five year old child some of the things that they call me now, although I believe that I grew up gay and that my sexual preference has been with me all my life.