trapped my wrist with the houndstooth glow
Oil on Canvas
30” x 40”
day two on a saturday
Oil on Canvas
26” x 32”
burned it down just like my other plans
Oil on Canvas
35” x 40”
north
carolina slow hold
Oil on Canvas
30” x 40”
Oil on Canvas
30” x 40”
College of Charleston Undergraduate Thesis Show
Hill Gallery, April 6th-20th 2023
Artist Statement
My paintings reckon with nostalgia and confront the subjectivity of memory, engaging with the past via the depiction of figures in nocturnal landscapes and alternative lighting conditions. These figures consciously engage with the passing of time and abstraction of memory with devices such as phones or camcorders, documenting and cataloging time through the gathering of images. I employ subtle distortion and off-kilter lighting effects that often result from source material being taken in fleeting moments via my phone, the same method of image-gathering that the subjects and figures in the work partake in. These paintings embrace the materiality and tactility of the medium, demonstrating my interest in formal elements of surface and the handling of paint as equal to narrative sensibilities that drive the work.
Intrinsically, the interrogation of memory results in fictionalized narratives and abstracted internal and external environments. Whilst a photograph may begin to inform the physicality and composition of the landscape of memory, the ‘truth’ of the scene lies abstracted in the periphery where figures and forms dissolve into abstract passages of marks and paint. Moments of clarity within the image exist alongside the abstraction and dissolution, often resulting in emotions of longing towards portions of the past. These paintings catalog the omnipresent internal conflict between creating self-serving fictionalized histories and reckoning with the past to put nostalgia to rest.