My Life as an Artist

By Romana Annette 02/05/2008

Some might be surprised that I briefly tried my hand at painting.  It was a period, from 1971 to 1981, when I had a lot more time.  My style was marked by impatience, along with much crudeness, intertwined with a bit of inspiration.

My subjects were often exactly what one would expect: frogs, dinosaurs, cats, and distant planets.  However, I did paint one nude woman, which garnered critical acclaim from friends who were artists.

I need to explain a little of my history.  While I now know that I was extremely interested in women way back at age ten, I was very slow at maturing, due to my form of autism, Asperger’s Syndrome.  At the same time, I was quite transgendered, so the whole thing about dating and mating was a total mystery to me.

When I was in the Air Force in the 1960’s, I was exceedingly naïve.  The other guys in the barracks were always trying to straighten me out.  Once, they even bought me a subscription to Playboy.  I was totally unaffected by and uninterested in the magazine.

In 1970, after leaving the Air Force, I got a job on Vandenberg AFB, and lived in Lompoc, California.  Lompoc had a reputation for being socially numbing.  Getting a date was nearly impossible, especially if one was socially incompetent.  This is why I eventually left and got a job at Boeing.

In 1971, I tried my hand at painting.  Specifically, I was using acrylics on ipsum board.  I did a series of paintings of Columbian (Ceratophrys) Horned Frogs.  At least, I had the particular subject all to myself.

In 1972, I bought a magazine of pinups.  It did not turn me on; I worried about this fact.  However, there was one picture of a Swedish model named Birgitta that caught my artistic interest.  I painted an approximate copy of the picture, but I both added information and subtracted information.  I got many compliments, especially, for the detail in the fingers.

I would like to profile all my paintings, but I cannot find some of them.  The Midnight Cat was my last painting.

I colorized a famous black and white dinosaur painting.

I also painted some dinosaurs from scratch.

And I painted some Frog Monsters.

I got married in 1980.  I soon became too busy to do any more painting.  I also caught up on all the sexuality that I had missed out on when I was younger; unfortunately, such experience was not retroactive.

I do not know how I missed so much when I was younger.  It is now obvious to me that I am an autistic transwoman, who has a normal male sexual interest in women, but is equally interested in totally emulating the objects of my affections.

This makes sense only to me.  It is interesting that I can now actually become friends with women, because there is no longer any anxiety.  My analytical, autistic nature prevents me from getting into trouble.  I am simple amazed how easily so-called normal people can ignore obvious problems, as they jump into the emotional minefields of additional intimate relationships.