714: Art Attack with Halie Torris

Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that wants you to draw us like one of your gay French girls.

This week Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out with figurative artist Halie Torris (@halietorris) to talk about the sapphic gaze in art and what differentiates it from the all too familiar male gaze. 

If you spend any time on lesbian TikTok you are likely familiar with Halie Torris’ paintings. The videos of her music-inspired paintings set to songs like Fletcher’s Cherry and Taylor Swift’s Maroon have gone viral multiple times, demonstrating just how feral we all are for art that doesn’t speak to the male gaze. The entire history of art has mostly been portrayed through the male gaze, a perspective that tends to objectify and oversexualize women. Sapphic art, in contrast, is much more subtle, focusing on the little things that men don’t typically appreciate. Halie describes her paintings as capturing the moment right before the climax of the action, that moment right before the wine splashes, the hook of a finger in a belt loop, the hand lightly grazing a thigh. Her paintings showcase the beauty and intricacies of sapphic relationships by sharing these more secretive moments that mainstream art often fails to recognize. There is a big focus on body language in Halie’s paintings and a tendency to intentionally obscure the subjects’ face from view. With the faces hidden, it is easier for people to connect their own narratives to the paintings. Halie views music as a prompt for creating her visual art, fueling the narratives that already reside within her. Alongside Halie’s music-inspired series, she has been hard at work on her newest series of paintings, the situationship series. These paintings focus on the turbulent emotions experienced before, during and after a situationship. 

We talk with Halie about her artistic journey, how her paintings going viral has impacted her, and of course, the gaylor of it all. Whether you are a Swiftie or not, there is no denying Taylor is a musical mastermind, painting pictures with her words through incredibly descriptive lyrics. Illustrative songs like Ivy and iconic stage performances like Taylor’s Vigilante Shit chair dance have inspired Halie to create gorgeous figurative paintings from the sapphic gaze. Taylor’s frequently queer-coded lyrics with a focus on secret relationships and yearning speak to sapphic listeners in a different way than their straight peers, in much the same way Halie’s art does. The beauty lies in the subtlety, a feature missing from figurative art created with the male gaze in mind. Even in 2024 Halie can practically count on one hand how many figurative artists she knows of who have made art for and from a female gaze let alone a sapphic one. While we of course wish that sapphic art was not so difficult to come by, we are thrilled that artists like Halie are working hard to change that. 

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