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With concept as priority, my large-scale figurative oil paintings offer subversive examples of societal “norms”, highlighting the inherent absurdism of the contemporary American Myth.
My working concepts often come into being through preoccupation with and examination of elements of the collective experience I find peculiar. Driven by a curiosity around social norms, their origins, and how they perpetuate and influence our individual perceptions of choice, autonomy, and expectations, my paintings examine what is real and contrived in history-informed contemporary American society. The core of the work sits in the tension between the individual and the collective experience, presenting questions for the viewer to consider rather than drawing definitive conclusions.
I typically find the root of a painting in common language, idioms, inversions and extreme representations of the usual, and within surprising elements of preliminary research. I then seek the patterns and inconsistencies within experiences that appear, at surface, to be universal, but in reality, are not through extensive research and inquiry. In preliminary drawings and eventually moving onto canvas, the familiar and broadly-accepted is exploited, inverted, or taken to an extreme while cultural, regional, familial, and domestic iconography are applied in order to develop a form of anti-domestic propaganda—a visual theory intended to upset what makes the subject’s circumstance an accepted “fact” or “inevitability”; a challenge to previous sunny-side-up depictions of American Life.
This results in gender inversions that use humor and a bright palette to illustrate the hypocrisy of the structures that hold us in place and narrative paintings that often present idioms at their literal interpretations and give appropriate credence to their role in societal influence—typically in the high noon, warm, and arid visual lexicon of my upbringing. Each painting examines how we ascribe and remove power and the disparate contexts through which we view and judge individuals based on our own ever-influenced expectations and cultural framework.
Intentionally painting within the nuance of reality, my body of work resists neat interpretation. Viewers often share conflicting reactions and interpretations, sharing personal anecdotes that reinforce the theory that while expectation is universal, experience is not. This offers opportunity for further study of the myriad ways in which individuals are impacted by the prevailing values of our society.