2015, Looking For You in the Mirror
One branch of my recent work puzzles the social impact of representations of women in the commercial media. These paintings reflect the shaping of personal narratives/ identities being forged out of, and based on, the push/ pull of desire/ allure. The poses, postures, surface treatments, and selectively enhanced/diminished proportions are archetypes, ubiquitous in the media, and out of reach in their flawless manufacture.
My work suggests that current views of beauty, so thoroughly conflated with notions of desire, power, lifestyle, and celebrity- have distracted the construction of our personal narratives.
My appropriation and re-arrangements of these ‘product’ images, echoes their ubiquitous presence and growing function as icons of desire. The cult of the individual has become the cult of emulation. Women must be not only beautiful but desirable- ‘hot’- and well accessorized.
