Transgender Art

Alford Lawrence, like Darger, is an outsider artist. He died in 2005, and little is known concerning his personal life, although, according to Red China Magazine, he worked as a gas station attendant for most of his adult life after a stint in the U. S. Army. "His drawing series are exhaustive studies of numerous sexual themes," red China Magazine says. "One focuses on transsexuals wearing supernaturally sheer slips."

Harriet Zabusky-Zand paints drag queens, to whom she refers as "flamboyant femme fatales." She says, "They personify a hyperbolic commentary on our concepts of feminine beauty and seductiveness," adding, "when we encounter them we are amused and confounded. Gender ambiguity subverts our codes and expectations of male and female roles."

Romaine Brooks painted women in male dress. According to Wikipedia, "Brooks's conservative style led many art critics to dismiss her, and by the 1960s her work was largely forgotten. The revival of figurative painting since the 1980s and new interest in the exploration of gender and sexuality through art have led to a reassessment of her work, and she is now seen as a precursor of present-day artists whose works depict cross-dressing [sic] and transgender themes."