Hello! My name is Devin aka Sissy Boy, and I am a self taught queer artist and Bay Area native who has been working in the Castro district of San Francisco since 2016. I chose the artist name Sissy Boy a few years back because a Sissy is one of the many names I was called as a kid, and it caused me a great amount of shame. Now that I am an adult, so many of the “sissy” qualities of myself that I hated as a kid are the things I love and embrace most about myself now. I am a sensitive, emotional and painfully empathetic human being and I wouldn’t change that for the world. Choosing the name Sissy Boy is about celebrating that balance of femininity and masculinity. 

Although I was constantly drawing as a child and always kept a sketch book, I hadn’t really started drawing consistently again until only a few years ago when I began using it as a method of coping with anxiety and depression. From around 2016-2018 my only method of illustrating was pen, pencil and markers in a sketch book. Since then I have been working exclusively on Procreate on an iPad Pro which has been a complete game changer for me.    

I think my work is best described as being very colorful and queer. I love using bright and bold primary colors, although I do try to change it up a bit sometimes.

I get most of my inspiration from the streets of San Francisco, the city I’ve been in love with ever since I was a kid. Whether it’s the feeling of being enveloped in skyscrapers downtown, watching a drag queen strut her stuff down Castro Street, or falling in love with the art that is this city’s architecture, San Francisco has given me so much inspiration. Even now that the city is becoming almost unrecognizable from the one I grew up with as a kid, I still on a daily basis find myself thinking, “I Still Love You, San Francisco”. That phrase has since become the inspiration for an on-going series of illustrations depicting the beauty of San Francisco and the ugly truth of what it has become.

I consider the art I make to be my love letter to the city I love and the queer community I am so proud to be apart of. Enjoy!
Xoxo, Sissy Boy