Painting With Pride: Local muralist depicts LGBTQ icons
TEXARKANA, Texas — David Teague has a colorful history and bright hopes for the future of Texarkana.
Teague is a foyer artist, and he paints larger-than-life murals. As LGBTQ Pride Month begins, he is working on one at local gay bar Village Station.
The mural features icons such as Tina Turner, Dolly Parton and Cher. It’s more special than usual for Teague because he has met Parton and had online interactions with Cher.
“The reason that women like Dolly Parton and Cher are my idols is because they’ve not stopped (making music) and they’ve kept growing,” Teague said.
Teague has lived in Texarkana since 1987 and says he has not seen many activities for LGBTQ people.
“Texarkana is one of those places where it’s home,” Teague said. “But, Bobby (the owner of Village Station) gives us a place to go if you want to go to a club scene, if you want to see a drag show. He provides that entertainment for us.”
Teague says he believes Texarkana has changed through the years and has “grown up” a little bit from when he first moved here. He described an incident that painted Texarkana negatively regarding how the LGBTQ community was treated here years ago.
“I was going out to my truck one night to leave a club and three guys pulled up,” he said. “One guy ran up to the side of my truck, and he knocked on the passenger side window. I reached over and rolled that one down and said, ‘Yeah?’”
The other two men pulled Teague out of the driver’s side window and carried him to the curb, where they began to beat him to the point where he lost consciousness.
“Some people would just say I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but no. I was just visiting with a friend,” he said. “I had just hugged my friend good night.”
Teague said he thinks the newer generation has schooled their parents on how things used to be and how they are now.
“They just said, ‘Enough is enough,’” he said of the younger generation. “If you’re gay, straight, transgendered — we don’t care.”
Teague thinks that the world could be better if people took a few cues from Dolly Parton, “because she treats people the way she wants to be treated and she has genuine concern for our fellow man. She has faith in her fellow humans and faith in a higher power.”
“They (the younger generation) just said, ‘Enough is enough. If you’re gay, straight, transgendered — we don’t care.”
—David Teague