Artist Statement
Photo: Karen Ryska
My paintings obsess over the ways mass media images bleed into and influence what we think of as our reality, the image as the whip of desire. Drawing from my experience as an advertising creative, I love to invert the meanings behind the images that assail us in a media-drenched, consumerist society. Beauty is thin-skinned here. There is a depth of horror beneath the surface. In this distorted yet immersive world, I see myself as much a landscape painter as a pop artist.
Whether I’m working as an artist or on commercial campaigns, I like to explore the ways desire works upon us, what it makes us do, how it provokes, how we react.
My practice also includes sculpture, drawing, collage, video and installations, but I primarily produce scratch-paintings. These invert conventional methods, making the form an element of the content. Thin layers of gloss are followed by globs of masonry paint. I then scratch out the image using knives and surgical instruments, combining techniques from etching with the gestural brushstrokes of Abstract Expressionism. I also paint in silicone, a highly toxic material in its unstable form that represents physically the theme of artificial manipulation and the goading of impossible longing and desires.
