Laguna College of Art + Design

My large scale drawings use depictions of the human figure to address the influence of society and electronic media on personal versus public identity. The messages that the media communicates have affected my opinion of myself, as well as my thoughts on life, sex, and body image. I am also influenced in how I interact with strangers and casual acquaintances, as well as those that I have personal relationships with. The lengths that we go to look a certain way as defined by the mass media have so much to do with our social interactions that I wanted to make a body of work that dealt with this subject. Placing near life-size figures on simple backgrounds allows me to confront the viewer with an image that is as much about the subject's personality as it is the viewer's.

There is a narrative that runs through each work, some more obvious than others, and viewers are challenged to pay attention to slight nuances in order to uncover meaning. The body of work is presented as a series of multiple images; groups of panels make up each piece. Each panel in a piece shows one side of a person's identity, whether it is a private identity or a public presentation. Thus, the viewer is often seeing multiple sides to the subject's personality at the same time. The artwork strives to confront the viewer with his or her own feelings on these issues. Everyone will react to a certain type of person in a different way, depending on his or her personal belief system and what they have grown up feeling comfortable (or uncomfortable) with. Therefore, there may be a piece in my series where one viewer will see a huge difference between the dual personas presented in a diptych, while a different viewer may see the two side-by-side images as nearly identical. Ideally, I would like for each viewer to bring his or her life experience to each piece of my art and get as much, or as little, from it as those experiences dictate.