Stifled and targeted in the conservative European communities in which they were considered “sexual deviants,” queer individuals were among the first to venture into the west in search of a fresh society where they could work, love, and grow, unencumbered by prejudice. The great irony of the west is its tidal change in values and the erasure of its true pioneers. Present-day citizens of the west who live within the shackles of homophobia and transphobia often share the same identities and experiences as the settlers who founded it.

Madsen’s collection honors, illuminates, and pokes fun at the queer backroads of American history and its bizarre flip in culture. With a playfulness and an insistence on sexual honesty, the collection laughs at the dichotomy between the contemporary conservative values of the west and the bright queer past it belongs to. The paintings feature characters who, once upon a time, would have held the most political, financial, and social power in their settlement communities. Sex workers, transgender cowboys, and lesbian pioneers peer outward from their canvases as if asking the viewer to recognize them. A saloon showgirl calls out to a modern burlesque dancer, an 1850s cowboy strikes a pose like a drag queen, two female pioneers find domestic flow in the same way a present-day lesbian family might. WANTED connects these pilgrims of identity with the Americans to whom this heritage belongs. The colors, sounds, and emotions oozing from these pieces, just like history-book bastardizations of these stories, feel just-barely incorrect. The sexual references, like the west’s secret of being settled by whores, outlaws, and queers, demand to be acknowledged. In a whirl of pride and humility and an amalgamation of historic and contemporary symbols, each piece draws queer discomfort and truth around the painfully falsified history of “The Wild West.”