Distance
Some recent events in my personal life have helped me re-focus on major themes in my work. I am invested in exploring the strange place between people by exaggerating the distance in making the object inanimate and unreal. We feel things for the unreal portraits, falsely feel like we understand. But our tendencies to love and idealize in an impossible way happens in our everyday lives: our relationships with celebrities we’ll never meet, old friends we never talk to anymore, or crushes we admire from a distance.
There is something incredibly romantic about these impossible relationships. It makes the people more beautiful and perfect, fitting so charmingly within the rectangle of the canvas. Portraits are not about capturing reality, but fostering a kind of idol worship that does not correspond with reality. Although the actual closeness between individuals may not exist, the feelings are as tangible as if the two had had coffee that very afternoon.
I want people to feel intimate with my portraits. I like that celebrities make the viewer feel like they know more details about the person, feeling closer. The feelings a 12 year old girl has for Justin Beiber are uncontrollable and intense. A woman in a marriage of 20 years who eats and sleeps with her husband daily may not even have this unbridled sense of urgency. Mystery and hope brew very real emotions. We should embrace our fantasy relationships and take a minute to appreciate how this false intimacy makes us feel.
