Following the Voices: Ryan Landry’s Paintings Take Center Stage

“You are more than your sexuality, your skin color, your tax bracket, your mortgage, your 501c — whatever you call it. You are your mind. Your mind is vast; it has more windows in it then Downton Abbey. So why not open a few? Do something so bizarre that people start questioning YOUR sanity. And, POOF: you’re an artist.” — from Ryan Landry’s “Escape the ‘Cage of Normalcy’: Be more” TEDxProvincetown, September 14, 2019.

There are many ways that you may have stumbled across the name Ryan Landry over the past few decades. Perhaps from the extensive catalog of pop-culture-bordering-on-acid-trip parody pieces of theatre that he’s produced in Provincetown, Boston and New York City with his troupe, the Gold Dust Orphans. You know, the plays with names like “Thoroughly Muslim Millie,” “Brokelahomo” and “The Ebonic Woman.”

Maybe it’s from “Space Pussy,” Landry’s recurring, glam-punk, celebrity-showcase of a rock band. Or it could be from “Showgirls,” the long-running, dripping-with-drag talent show Landry hosts on the tip of Cape Cod every summer.