Statement
The overall concept of representation is so very flawed. Representation, or the act of re-presenting, is flawed in the way that humans are flawed, or in the way that history is flawed. The person doing the representing determines the way something is represented and those images could be taken as fact or as what they are, just stories. Our own history, a story of an explorer discovering a New World lies in contention with a history of indigenous peoples. The narrative of Christian history competes with the scientific community’s theory of evolution. These histories, these representations, are how we shape our world-view. Today, we call this fake news, news that is not fact based, but that is rooted in the interpreter’s own ideal narrative. This is not limited to news, however, but everything, social media, popular culture and even academia. Women in western culture are stuck being seen as sensitive or housewives or nurturing because that’s how we’ve been represented in the past. Museums and school curriculums are shaped by a few people’s idea of what is important, based on a narrative spun long ago. Even the way that information is presented, and re-presented to the viewer constructs a new narrative, altering the focus from one thing to another, for example, removing “significant moments” from history books to appeal to a certain group of people or to not offend another. In fact, my own social media presence is curated, representing my most interesting and desirable qualities, because I write that narrative and I can be as cool as I want you to think I am. I am so cool.
I have taken a hybrid approach to representation; I look at the world and fabricate a narrative based on my perception of reality. The stories I tell, which in my most recent series of paintings, depict the passive-aggressive world of cohabitating a work space and the strange dynamics that affect those employed such as the behind-closed-doors scheming and the double-meaning emails that pepper the everyday work space. These works, though never directly calling out any references are directly pulled from my own experiences and representations of men and women through movies, books and television.
And so, I am very interested in representation, and I utilize it through the medium of painting, which is a medium that can inherently present its thought process by leaving a trail showing each brushstroke one after another. My own dialogue with the painting is represented through layers and strokes and scrapings away. I believe that this is the realest form of representation because it represents an actual chronology of events. I find it ironic to work in this way, because paintings are often thought of as being “creations” or conjuring images when really, it’s so much a documentary of motion.
It is exciting to work this way because of the paradox that nothing I represent can be truly representative.
I have taken a hybrid approach to representation; I look at the world and fabricate a narrative based on my perception of reality. The stories I tell, which in my most recent series of paintings, depict the passive-aggressive world of cohabitating a work space and the strange dynamics that affect those employed such as the behind-closed-doors scheming and the double-meaning emails that pepper the everyday work space. These works, though never directly calling out any references are directly pulled from my own experiences and representations of men and women through movies, books and television.
And so, I am very interested in representation, and I utilize it through the medium of painting, which is a medium that can inherently present its thought process by leaving a trail showing each brushstroke one after another. My own dialogue with the painting is represented through layers and strokes and scrapings away. I believe that this is the realest form of representation because it represents an actual chronology of events. I find it ironic to work in this way, because paintings are often thought of as being “creations” or conjuring images when really, it’s so much a documentary of motion.
It is exciting to work this way because of the paradox that nothing I represent can be truly representative.