The Vanishing Point
This series investigates the relationship between truth and fiction. It is both theatrical and confessional, and through it, I explore the ephemeral nature of identity. We are the sum of our memories, and our memories are the stories we tell ourselves. I tell my own story through metaphor, with the knowledge that events become experience through a filter of desire. In my work this filter becomes increasingly opaque, and I narrate my personal history as an allegory of fear and longing. Through the creation of a wholly fictional world, I hope to uncover some aspect of truth.
As an artist, I rehearse the script of my memory as it is endlessly rewritten. My paintings are the performance. They attempt to reenact life, to become larger than life, but always reveal their own artifice. Overacted and hyperbolic, their grandiose gestures are performed in a poorly made set on the verge of collapse. Even when they simulate reality, they are carefully staged, recreating a private world for public display. The more closely my work mimics actual experience, the more fictional it becomes.
But even self-proclaimed fiction can suspend disbelief. It tells the truth like a liar's paradox. Real life lurks in the subtext, between the lines, behind the curtain.
