Artist Statement
My artistic practice is an ongoing exploration into issues of morality, spirituality and violence. Inspiration for this subject matter comes from personal experience dealing with concurrent expressions of both violence and beauty. My work aims to create similar emotional impact by synthesizing socially and politically challenging material into something outside the ordinary.
Using a process that combines techniques of painting and photography, I transform difficult subject matter through a selection of devices adopted from the history of visual expression. Modes of representation such as those used in the psychology of media and marketing, classical painting, and the entertainment industry are dispersed in order to defer immediate comprehension and extend the possibilities of interpretation.
This strategy is intended as a critical platform from which to caricature a cultural obsession with violent entertainment, the mediated delivery of emotional impact, and voyeuristic gratification. My work symbolizes a futile attempt to redeem violent imagery; it is an equally sincere attempt as it is a sarcastic criticism. My intention is to both seduce and repel, as well as to complicate the act of looking. The simultaneous representation of violence and beauty is intended to attract the viewer’s gaze and then cause that attraction to become problematic.