Think Pink: Why These Little Plastic Icons Carry My Biggest Ideas…

What’s with the pink cowboy figure?  It is the anchor of my current visual vocabulary. Originally stepping into my work in the late 1990s and early 2000s, these miniature plastic icons recently roared back into my practice after my son and I rediscovered them in old studio bins. The unexpected color pink is my way of introducing a playful moment of defiance and unexpected softness into the rigid, monotone machismo of traditional Western folklore. They take heavy cultural narratives and make them accessible, absurd, and subversive all at once, proving that sometimes the best way to critique a myth is to dress it up in bright pink.