Avery McDowell is a multidisciplinary artist from Portland, Oregon. Her work draws on personal experiences with gender, disability, and navigating the modern social landscape as a person it wasn't designed for. After graduating from Oregon State University in 2025 with her BFA in Studio Art with a focus in painting and sculpture, Avery plans to pursue her MFA and teach art full-time. She strives to take control of her own narrative through self-portraiture and explore the connection she has to her physical form in a way that acknowledges the complexities of living in an unreliable body while also finding joy and pride in her identity. Her work builds on long-standing themes in her practice around the expectations society places on disabled people and provides perspective outside of established conventions of what the world says disabled people are allowed to do, be, or desire.