Artist Statement

I’m interested in the blurred boundaries between cultural memory and history, and between personal memory and fantasy. Images from periodicals, all dating from the 1950’s-1970’s, dictate the composition of my paintings. From the era which birthed extensive media campaigns, these found images present an ideal vision of the American Dream. My work explores the role they play in constructing both cultural memory and amnesia. The figures in my work are often ghostly and faceless, leaving a vacant character for the viewer to inhabit, and simultaneously reflects current tensions between individual and cultural identity. Mythical happenings and celestial bodies are often depicted within these wholesome moments, eliciting an air of foreboding within the painting. Drawing on our own insignificance within the vastness of the universe, these characters are forced to contend with powers beyond their control.