'My Protector' Painting

Unique distressed archival pigment print on Canson Mi-Tientes paper with acrylic paint, gel medium, and silver leaf. 70 x 50 cm Signed on the back and comes with a certificate of authenticity which has matching hologram numbered sticker. Throughout my career as a photography-based artist and a professor I have examined a variety of psychological idiosyncrasies and techniques to break down and deconstruct the human form. Utilizing a variety of innovative approaches and an ever-expanding visual vocabulary of experiences and materials. I desire to understand and make sense of the psychology behind the choices I have made in my life and the interactions I have with society. I am a walking contradiction; I desire both to be guarded and vulnerable. I desire to be understood but only within my own level of comfort. The fact is that I am both afraid of, and desire to be understood simultaneously. It is this conflict within myself that I am striving to visually express in this work. I want to be understood but I want to do it in a way that I feel comfortable, not on cultural or societal terms, but my own. I strive to engage the viewer in this tug of war with how much of my personality and psyche to conceal and how much to allow to be vulnerable. The folds in the paper are fractures or wounds that have dissected my life into different aspects that divide and unify a lifetime of experiences. This refractive and reflexive quality of the folds and the layers allows me to incorporate elements of cubism and conceptualism in the process of deconstructing the human form. This is an advancement of my previous work through an expansion of my technical and visual vocabulary to focus more on the emotive and expressive qualities. Adding in the elements of texture, finish, and depth to transcend the source photograph and enhance engagement in the balance of concealment and exposure. I seek to create works that express a sense of order in my mental chaos. While striving to strike a balance between structure and discord. The use of hundreds of layers of translucent paper involved in creating the visually diaphanous elements of the work contradicts the guarded and armor like metallic elements of the work. The didactic nature of these opposing elements are reflections of my feeling about the archeology of the human psyche, expressing my interest in the psychology of exposure and concealment.