2013
My artwork is rooted in photography. The process I use to create a painting or drawing always starts with a camera, through which I pursue the ideal image. This may mean taking over 50 pictures for one piece. I like to take images of people looking a certain way or doing a certain thing that tells something about that subject, without an overbearing background to distract from the foreground. The lighting I choose for a shoot helps emphasize the mood I want to get across in that piece. Achieving the right photo for a work is central to the finished product.
The process I use for my paintings and drawings, past the point of photography, is very straight forward. I work realistically in structure and proportions, using a unique color palette and shying away from local color. With my color, I can portray something such as skin and have it read as just that. Because of the strangeness of the color choice, however, the viewer may also feel a sense of unease at seeing skin tones such as blue, green, harsh reds and yellows. I tend to work large because I want the viewer to both be affected by the size and to look closely to see the technical aspects of the painting that would be missed from a distance. My drawings, very much like my paintings, are realist in structure and proportion. Adding colored pencil and elements of collage to my graphite drawings helps get a sense of color that would otherwise not exist. Color is a key formal aspect I look to when making a body of work.
Although my work clearly admits the influence of Chuck Close, I do not grid my work like he does, but use a 1 to 1 measurement on a larger scale to get my proportions. This helps me create a sometimes “off ” perspective that makes my drawings unique and not identical to the image I am working from. I look to Francois Nielly for my color inspiration, but my overall interest in painting comes from artists such as Lucian Freud, Alice Neel and Jenny Saville. Their works share a very uneasy strange quality that I am starting to discover within my own. This strangeness comes not only from color, but how things are off balance and sometimes not to scale, such as the sloping of one eye in comparison to the other, or the gaze of a subject in direct contact with the viewer.
My more recent body of work has been about interactions with the face and facial expressions. The expressions I choose for a painting and drawing help portray a certain mood. This mood is not always the same, and can be interpreted differently by the viewer to help connect to my work on a deeper level. Building up narratives is also very important to me and showing different objects in relationship to the subject I am painting can help the viewer get a better sense of the story behind the piece.
My artwork is rooted in photography. The process I use to create a painting or drawing always starts with a camera, through which I pursue the ideal image. This may mean taking over 50 pictures for one piece. I like to take images of people looking a certain way or doing a certain thing that tells something about that subject, without an overbearing background to distract from the foreground. The lighting I choose for a shoot helps emphasize the mood I want to get across in that piece. Achieving the right photo for a work is central to the finished product.
The process I use for my paintings and drawings, past the point of photography, is very straight forward. I work realistically in structure and proportions, using a unique color palette and shying away from local color. With my color, I can portray something such as skin and have it read as just that. Because of the strangeness of the color choice, however, the viewer may also feel a sense of unease at seeing skin tones such as blue, green, harsh reds and yellows. I tend to work large because I want the viewer to both be affected by the size and to look closely to see the technical aspects of the painting that would be missed from a distance. My drawings, very much like my paintings, are realist in structure and proportion. Adding colored pencil and elements of collage to my graphite drawings helps get a sense of color that would otherwise not exist. Color is a key formal aspect I look to when making a body of work.
Although my work clearly admits the influence of Chuck Close, I do not grid my work like he does, but use a 1 to 1 measurement on a larger scale to get my proportions. This helps me create a sometimes “off ” perspective that makes my drawings unique and not identical to the image I am working from. I look to Francois Nielly for my color inspiration, but my overall interest in painting comes from artists such as Lucian Freud, Alice Neel and Jenny Saville. Their works share a very uneasy strange quality that I am starting to discover within my own. This strangeness comes not only from color, but how things are off balance and sometimes not to scale, such as the sloping of one eye in comparison to the other, or the gaze of a subject in direct contact with the viewer.
My more recent body of work has been about interactions with the face and facial expressions. The expressions I choose for a painting and drawing help portray a certain mood. This mood is not always the same, and can be interpreted differently by the viewer to help connect to my work on a deeper level. Building up narratives is also very important to me and showing different objects in relationship to the subject I am painting can help the viewer get a better sense of the story behind the piece.