Virginia Townsend is one of nine winners of the 2024 Midwest Award for Artists with Disabilities. This award is designed to support accessibility in the arts and celebrate the exceptional work of disabled Midwestern visual artists.
“My work is disability- and femme-centric non-objective abstract art. My goals are to explore my experiences of mental health unit hospitalizations, being “high need” according to Hennepin County, and navigating group homes and other facilities as a woman with trauma. My goal is to challenge the idea that topics related to women need to be represented by literal depictions of femme bodies, often sexualized. Using non-representational scenes I level uneven power dynamics between those with disability and those without. My goal is for no one to have an advantage when viewing my work, so viewers of class or economic status differences can interpret the images in equally meaningful ways. This helps people less defensive and more open-minded when talking about historically stigmatized subjects, like mental illness and behavioral disorders. My work expresses these goals by setting the scene for novel and solution-focused conversations. The way I paint is using repeating patterns, neon colors, and weaving layers to demonstrate immediacy and complexity higher need disabled people face with their services and the difficulty large systems have providing truly person-centered care.”