My recent paintings explore boundaries. They float in the space between the genres of landscape, portraiture, and still life. They engage in a conversation between high and low art. These works also explore the limits of representation – posing the question: How far-removed can a painting be before it ceases to represent the original subject?
I am attracted to the figurines because of their personalities – they are strange, comical, and slightly discomforting. This body of work lies somewhere between still life and portraiture – it borrows from each, but doesn’t fully conform to either genre. I choose to isolate the figurines in a simple environment to focus on conveying the personalities of these non-living objects. Concurrently, I am working on a series of paintings that replicate elements of landscapes in a shallow two-dimensional still life. The intention of these paintings is to explore the space between the genres of landscape and still life. I am interested in the interplay between the seemingly infinite scale of landscape and the finite scale of still life paintings. |