My intent is to recontextualize common snapshot photography to underscore the formal language of this medium through painting, and to invite the viewer to reconsider these family photographs in the context of painting expression, rather than common convention. Courtesy of gallery NAGA, Boston. Paul Gauguin speaks of painting and dreaming at the same time, of waking when the painting is finished. In doing my work, a certain lulling can occur. As the layers of marks are recorded by the hand and traced by the eye, awareness seems to hover at various levels simultaneously, sounding across limits of space and time.
Control gives way to allowance.
The strokes exist within the possibility of limitless combinations, and an internal structure slowly becomes visible. Together, we reconcile the desire to praise with the desire to reveal. And in the end we come to some agreement that a likeness something truthful enough has been born. In this series of portraits, with my brothers, my sisters, and myself as subjects, I am exploring the construction of my family s identity. I m interested in the things that made us family and the things that bind us as adult individuals today, with little else in common but our history.