This week saw the 2 year birthday of KevsArt.com. The time has flown by and so much has changed, both with the site and myself. Art started out as a little hobby with the intention of one day creating some custom anime characters for fun. However, before I knew it, it not only became a massive part of my life, but it allowed me to find myself in ways I could never have imagined. The way KevsArt.com has evolved over this past 2 years perfectly reflects my own personal journey. As you can see from the following image, when I launched the site on September 8th 2013, it looked drastically different.

Over the course of 2014 I soon began to realise KevsArt.com wasn’t just a place for me to show my art, like I had originally intended. It was becoming almost like a personal diary, charting my own inner journey. Art was given me strength and during 2014, for the first time ever, I was tackling my gender issues head on. I knew somehow that Art was more than just Art for me, Art was massively linked to my femininity. It was allowing me to find myself, and towards the end of 2014, I finally had a breakthrough. For the first time in my life, I accepted the fact that I was transgender. The end of a 34 year battle. This acceptance found its way into KevsArt.com in a very visual way. By sheer coincidence I was in the process of redesigning the site, moving everything over from Blogger to WordPress. The following image shows what the site looked like just before the WordPress redesign.

The site was still blue but had become more than just my art. I had added a favourites section where I was studying other artists and females, the blog was keeping me honest and allowing me to process the things I was learning and the theme of femininity was now pulsating throughout the entire site. It was, however, becoming a bit of a nightmare to keep everything cohesive, as the site was still running on WebPlus and Blogger, two separate platforms. I decided it was time to move over to WordPress, I put my Art to one side and just focused all my energy on getting the new site created. Weeks later, I was nearly done, but the site was still blue. ‘Pink‘, I thought to myself, ‘Make the site pink!’ Art had got me to a point in my life where I could fully accept who I was and including my female persona Sophie on the site now felt almost natural. Like it was always supposed to be this way.

Pink just felt right and everything now needed to be changed from blue to pink, fortunately WordPress made this task a lot easier than I originally feared. Once everything was finished I sat and asked myself, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ There would be no going back. Once Sophie was on the site, I knew everything would change … and not just visually. I thought long and hard, sometimes doubting myself and thinking I should revert back to the blue design and keep Sophie separate. Something in my heart though was telling me to do this and in November 2014, I relaunched the site in it’s new pretty pink shade.

I then spent months changing things around, first Sophie was just a section hidden away, than she was added to the front page and now I think I have a nice balance between Sophie and Art on the site, I’m just still struggling with getting the balance right in my life. I see KevsArt.com as very much an extension of myself and so it’s definitely a work in progress. Moving over to WordPress was such a good decision. It opened the door to so much functionality, and once I got over the initial time investment, I found myself being able to do tasks much faster. Thinking back to how I had to update the site before WordPress, I honestly don’t know how I did it. What now takes 2 minutes with WordPress would have taken me 30 minutes on WebPlus. So while the initial time investment of WordPress was pretty high, the time saved now dwarfs it by miles.

It’s true that at the moment I’m not creating anywhere near the level of Art I want to. This year my art has really suffered. Accepting who I am has come at a cost, it isn’t a case of waking up the next day and everything’s sorted. I see now acceptance is just the start, there is still plenty for me to have to face on a personal level with regards my gender. My journey has also lead me to the point I’m at in my life now where I’m able to help my Mum. Right now, this is my priority. My Art has suffered, but I hope with everything I have that in the long run, helping my Mum is the right thing to do. Only time will tell.

On Tuesday I return to life drawing class after our two month summer holiday and next week I’m starting a second Art course which will include painting, so things are finally in motion. I’ve no idea what my life, or KevsArt.com, will look like in two years time, but if it’s anything like the past two years, it’s going to look quite different!

The following image is what KevsArt.com looks like today.