As a lifelong serial obsessive and child of the 70s and 80s, I have been drawn to a long string of iconic creatives: superstar heroes of art and pop culture, seeking inspiration for my own creative endeavors. I consider them a personal pantheon that have grown to become facets of my own identity. The list is extensive, and I have extensively mined it for this project. I have split and combined their portraits alongside similarly treated portraits of others who have influenced or inspired me in various ways: family members, muses, contemporaries, friends and former friends, champions of my work, and even the inevitable haters. These individuals have impacted my life and the shaping of my self-identity. By creating a patchwork of their fragmented and intermingled portraits, visually evoking quilts, I am piecing together what I consider self-portraits. My hope is that this work encourages viewers to contemplate the people in their own lives who have contributed to the unique, complex collage that defines their identities.
These artworks are photo-based collages of digitally processed, internet-sourced images filtered to resemble classical painted portraits while also embodying a touch of the Uncanny Valley phenomenon: the peculiar feeling experienced when encountering something that appears almost, but not entirely, human. This sense of uncertainty perfectly complements these artworks and their physicality. They possess a painterly appearance but are, in fact, hand-embellished acrylic-glazed archival prints on canvas. These prints are trimmed into quilting triangles and intuitively rearranged to form these compositions.
An underlying theme that weaves my work together is the emphasis on the deconstruction of the concept of Art itself, what it signifies, and its boundless possibilities. This new body of work exemplifies that pursuit.
