“I would play with dolls with my sisters, and it felt like I was doing hard drugs,” recounts the artist Leonard Baby, whose new solo exhibition at Half Gallery marks an inward turn for a painter best known for depersonalizing his subjects. The show, in which Baby explores family and trauma by depicting film stills, is his most intimate one yet. “It has been heavy, but it’s also been really cathartic,” he told me. Growing up in a restrictive religious environment that taught him to pray away his feminine proclivities, the New York-based artist’s new paintings are a love letter to his sisters. In 8 new acrylic paintings, he delves into the scars sustained from his experiences in conversion therapy and the liberating power of embracing his true identity as a queer artist. Before it opens next week, Baby invited me to his live-in studio in Bushwick to discuss his childhood rebellion, his decision to use a pseudonym, and the inspiration behind his very first self-portrait.