Still (Real) LYF 28 Painting

The focus of my practice explores balance through illusion and deception, creating relationships of image-based representation to tangible, sculptural objects. Often the perceptual and physical space of painting collides through the use of non-traditional materials and interruption of the painted plane. Image becomes object and vice-versa. The image is now digested by the masses not as a photo of something else, but as an entity all to itself. The images produced, and now disseminated across endless technological landscapes have found a life of their own; in turn putting in to question the current authority in which the object itself holds. This makes me think of a Christina Rosen quote, “It is understandable why so many have been so jealous of the image’s influence. Sight is our most powerful sense, much more dominant in translating experience than taste, touch, or hearing. And images appeal to emotion — often viscerally so. They claim our attention without uttering a word. They can persuade, repel, or charm us. They can be absorbed instantly and easily by anyone who can see. They seem to speak for themselves.” In today’s world, deciphering the difference between looking and seeing is a certain shade of grey that doesn’t lend it self to a culture of immediacy. Using the dichotomy of art with craft and design, benign images and forms are used as points of inquiry. The digestible still life, botanicals, portraits and carpentry are so familiar that their very existence is wallpaper worthy; as to say their histories are camouflaged in to the mundanity of every day life. Yet, the relationship of skin with bones transgresses the consumable surface. The isolated image or object then comes to life in its illusion. An illusion that is less about it’s opticality and more about referencing reality versus observed reality. As if one were to view the world through a piece of saran wrap.