I view my surroundings as a perpetual narrative, and it is within this narrative that I begin to create. My artwork stems from the traditional genre of portraiture presented through a theatrical lens that dramatizes commonplace scenery utilizing bright, vibrant hues and highly exaggerated compositions. Each painting seeks to identify the absurdity in the mundane and challenge what we value in our reality. This body of work seeks to understand what it means to function in contemporary society through a humorous perspective that identifies the value in all segments of the daily experience.
My process begins as a visual record of my life, interactions, and perspectives. I document this visual record through video recordings and photographic still-shots. From this, I transpose aspects of collage through a rearranging of compositional elements in a digital format. I warp and readjust my composition to create off-kilter images that spark a peculiar interest in the absurdity of the mundane.
I often stop to contemplate how we curate our lives for the sake of others. How is it that we live double lives in our modern age? Why do we seemingly ignore certain events from our lives in favor of the extravagant and exciting? My artwork explores these questions through the dramatization of scenes that would typically be ignored. I shift my focus away from the excitement and curated facade of social media and public life, instead focusing myself, in an ironic twist, on the monotony of reality. Like a melodramatic filter, I shift the focus away from what we perceive as valuable to our digital and public depictions in favor of the observation, and appreciation, of our unique interactions with the mundane. My art seeks to pay homage to the fragments of our lives that we choose to exclude and analyze the choices we make for the sake of our curated presence.
