Crissia Vaughn

As a hunter, I am aware that the majority of societal resources needed for survival are mediated through capitalism. While pursuing my BFA at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, I developed a series of self-portraits derived from photographs captured on my spearfishing dives. Driven by the understanding that nature is as brutal as it is beautiful and that hunting is an essential process at every level of the natural food chain, I use large-scale photorealism and vivid colors in an effort to reconnect my audience with the hunt and transfix them within the intricate evolutional details of the animals that we eat. I take inspiration from the awareness that some of the earliest documented forms of painting were Paleolithic cave paintings which revered the hunt and the animals on which the painters depended. My work is thus a contemporary continuation of this prehistoric painting ritual, honoring the intrinsic relationship between human and animal, hunter and prey.