My paintings are personal responses to specific moments and places, as opposed to being fungible images in service of rhetorical positions. To me, it’s creating an image, as opposed to presenting some platonic image, which is critical. I leave my hand in the work; I want to show traces of my effort and doubt. I welcome ambiguity and the prominence of marks.
In the Bad Dancing Series, I dwell on my awkward party moves. I am embracing my flaws and mistakes. Vulnerability should be celebrated and not hidden. The Mental Tourism Series, meanwhile, is based on Google Street View images and photographs found on Google Maps. They depict places that fascinate me—such as Mexico City as described in Robert Belano’s The Savage Detectives—which I visit through online tourism. Some of the places I actually know from physical visits, while others I’ve just read or heard about. Either way, the paintings are the result of trying to understand these places—of trying to inhabit them, so to speak—through the limited information I glean through my Internet travels.
In the Bad Dancing Series, I dwell on my awkward party moves. I am embracing my flaws and mistakes. Vulnerability should be celebrated and not hidden. The Mental Tourism Series, meanwhile, is based on Google Street View images and photographs found on Google Maps. They depict places that fascinate me—such as Mexico City as described in Robert Belano’s The Savage Detectives—which I visit through online tourism. Some of the places I actually know from physical visits, while others I’ve just read or heard about. Either way, the paintings are the result of trying to understand these places—of trying to inhabit them, so to speak—through the limited information I glean through my Internet travels.