We recently connected with Derek Pentz and have shared our conversation below.

Derek, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

The most meaningful project I did was to En Plein Air paint in full drag at the Upper Chesapeake Bay pride festival in my hometown of Havre de Grace, MD this past October 2022. I had been studying En Plein Air painting, or painting outdoors in public, all year and noticed that this style of painting is a performance that I can incorporate brand theatrics into. When my hometown had its LGBT pride festival, I knew I wanted to participate as my drag character but since I am recovering from a knee injury, I knew I couldn’t perform in a standard lip sync performance typical of the drag show. I reached out to the promoters and got permission to use the drag tent to get in drag, and instead of performing on stage, I was out in the audience painting the scene in front of me. I could tell that people didn’t really get what I doing, but it did get a lot of attention and I even made the regional newspaper. It was the first time I realized I had something innovative and figured out how I could mix together my visual and theater art.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am Derek Pentz but I am also known as my famed drag persona Zenobia Darling. I am most identified as a painter and comedic drag performer, but in the past year, I have been mixing those two creative outlets together in an innovative way. The first foray into this mixing was with my book series, #RockStarLife, and starting my own fine art label, Zenobia Darling Creative. Since then, I have been exhibiting my fine art in drag, using theatrics to create Zenobia’s ethereal world in the exhibition space, as well as En Plein Air painting in glam drag at street festivals in Maryland. My art is equally about the experience that the client has with my work as it is the finished painting. I have been painting and training as a traditional fine painter since childhood, but anymore I choose to apply this tradition in a new and thought-provoking way using Neo-Expressionism and Abstract Expressionism with lots of glitter. I am most proud of being one of the first out queer artists in my conservative hometown’s art scene. I have faced a lot of homophobia/transphobia here throughout my life and during 2022 when I was breaking into this scene. But I also found a lot of support which is what I choose to focus on, but I do tell the juicy stories of the homophobia I have had to deal with on my Patreon.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

I am heavily influenced by Andy Warhol and social media influencer culture as Warhol was ahead of his time and laid a blueprint for how our current society is structured. I also theatrically study reality tv, writing my undergraduate theater thesis in college on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and surprisingly, this theatrical study of aspirational lifestyle reality tv has been an extremely helpful tool I use to sell my art and promote my brand. Also, the writings of Allan Kaprow had been vital to me in how to blur the lines between my visual and performance art, and how to bring the virtual world of social media into the real world.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

We live in a society that does not support artists. Think about how many times we artists are steered away from doing anything creative in this pursuit that we must be making money, with the arts being viewed as less than others. The biggest thing you can do to support artists and create a thriving creative ecosystem is to not view other artists as competition and create a collaborative art scene in the area where you live. One thing we do in the area I live is when one artist has paint nights, we have a Facebook group and members in that group are invited to show up to the paint night and work on their own paintings in class.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.zenobiadarlingcreative.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zenobia_darling/
• Youtube: https://www.zenobiadarlingcreative.com/video

Image Credits
Zenobia Darling Creative