Im So Sweet
Name: Nikki Haas
Title of Piece: I'm So Sweet
Size: 15" x 18"
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Price: 400
Description: I am a femme lesbian artist in the Midwest, in a relationship with a butch/masc lesbian. My work explores my side of the butch-femme dynamic—a powerful and historically rich expression of lesbian identity that became most visible in the mid-20th century. I focus on the contradictions embedded in femme identity: strong and soft, beautiful and ugly, mean and kind, seen and hidden. I often embody opposing traits at once, and my work visualizes that tension. Through self-portraits in gargoyle-like, dog-like poses—largely inspired by Paula Rego’s Dog Women—I explore abjection, desire, and rage: emotions often deemed “unfeminine,” yet central to my experience as a queer woman. The color palette in many of my paintings is drawn from the orange-pink lesbian pride flag introduced in 2018, which aimed to include butch lesbians after their exclusion from earlier symbols like the lipstick lesbian flag. My work is deeply informed by cycles of erasure and reclamation within lesbian history. I reflect on how femme identity has been both hyper-visible and misunderstood, often flattened or erased in cultural memory. By referencing past aesthetics, dynamics, and symbols I participate in an evolving archive of queer resilience. My work is both an act of remembrance and transformation, honoring the histories I’ve inherited while pushing toward new expressions of queer embodiment. I reclaim femininity as something both powerful and monstrous while interrogating how female bodies are controlled, sanitized, and mythologized in contemporary visual culture.
Name: Nikki Haas
Title of Piece: I'm So Sweet
Size: 15" x 18"
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Price: 400
Description: I am a femme lesbian artist in the Midwest, in a relationship with a butch/masc lesbian. My work explores my side of the butch-femme dynamic—a powerful and historically rich expression of lesbian identity that became most visible in the mid-20th century. I focus on the contradictions embedded in femme identity: strong and soft, beautiful and ugly, mean and kind, seen and hidden. I often embody opposing traits at once, and my work visualizes that tension. Through self-portraits in gargoyle-like, dog-like poses—largely inspired by Paula Rego’s Dog Women—I explore abjection, desire, and rage: emotions often deemed “unfeminine,” yet central to my experience as a queer woman. The color palette in many of my paintings is drawn from the orange-pink lesbian pride flag introduced in 2018, which aimed to include butch lesbians after their exclusion from earlier symbols like the lipstick lesbian flag. My work is deeply informed by cycles of erasure and reclamation within lesbian history. I reflect on how femme identity has been both hyper-visible and misunderstood, often flattened or erased in cultural memory. By referencing past aesthetics, dynamics, and symbols I participate in an evolving archive of queer resilience. My work is both an act of remembrance and transformation, honoring the histories I’ve inherited while pushing toward new expressions of queer embodiment. I reclaim femininity as something both powerful and monstrous while interrogating how female bodies are controlled, sanitized, and mythologized in contemporary visual culture.
Name: Nikki Haas
Title of Piece: I'm So Sweet
Size: 15" x 18"
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Price: 400
Description: I am a femme lesbian artist in the Midwest, in a relationship with a butch/masc lesbian. My work explores my side of the butch-femme dynamic—a powerful and historically rich expression of lesbian identity that became most visible in the mid-20th century. I focus on the contradictions embedded in femme identity: strong and soft, beautiful and ugly, mean and kind, seen and hidden. I often embody opposing traits at once, and my work visualizes that tension. Through self-portraits in gargoyle-like, dog-like poses—largely inspired by Paula Rego’s Dog Women—I explore abjection, desire, and rage: emotions often deemed “unfeminine,” yet central to my experience as a queer woman. The color palette in many of my paintings is drawn from the orange-pink lesbian pride flag introduced in 2018, which aimed to include butch lesbians after their exclusion from earlier symbols like the lipstick lesbian flag. My work is deeply informed by cycles of erasure and reclamation within lesbian history. I reflect on how femme identity has been both hyper-visible and misunderstood, often flattened or erased in cultural memory. By referencing past aesthetics, dynamics, and symbols I participate in an evolving archive of queer resilience. My work is both an act of remembrance and transformation, honoring the histories I’ve inherited while pushing toward new expressions of queer embodiment. I reclaim femininity as something both powerful and monstrous while interrogating how female bodies are controlled, sanitized, and mythologized in contemporary visual culture.