Artist Statment

My work challenges the viewer’s understanding of human interaction. I take away the tools of emotional interpretation by removing the subjects' facial cues and dare the viewer to pursue emotional exploration or specific appraisal of personality. The goal of my work is to create conflict through a series of portraits with divided emphasis between posture and eye contact, simultaneously inviting and dismissing interactive engagement. Through posture that refuses to acknowledge or make eye contact with the viewer I vicariously repel the viewer, and deny participation in the work, like a visual form of the silent treatment. In a similar yet opposite way I also confront the viewer through an uncomfortable forced encounter with the subjects' eye contact that deliberately breaches the viewer’s personal space. The two dimensional surface to denies escape until the viewer has left the room.

Rather than assigner of concept, I am a facilitator for meaning. I put the responsibility of extracting significance upon the viewer as challenge to look introspectively and uncover personal meaning. I set the stage, and I control the interaction, but the viewer must finish the work and add the content. I provide only enough information for the viewer to fill in the gaps and create their own meaning or story. Other than my personal interpretation of the subject, my paintings do not themselves contain a particular idea, but are instead designed to promote individual application. Thus the viewer is able to see both what I see and what I don’t see.

The only accurate interpretation of my work is a personal one. That a certain pose, composition, or lighting causes a person to feel any particular way about my work reveals that individual’s unique perspective, biases, and distortions of perception that change only the observation of the work. During this process the painting itself remains unchanged and individually significant to someone else. I press the viewer to internalize their understanding of human connection and learn something new about the way they view the world that they may discover more about themselves than the work.