New Year, New Work!
Monday January 4, 2010
Happy New Year, all! It’s been my best year ever so far…
I’ve just posted two new paintings in the Newspaper portfolio. There are six more in progress, so look for updates soon.
This is what I recently wrote to a friend about the new work:
I’ve been interested for a long time in how most of the news we hear in the United States is often very removed from our private lives. We hear about tragedies all over the world and there is nothing we can do about them. These paintings are a little bit more about big world events that do affect people in the United States, but still seem removed. For example, the financial crisis has had a huge impact on people all over the country, but this is still the richest country in the world and if it isn’t affecting someone personally, it is still hard to see. Another example is the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We see and hear all kinds of horrible images from the wars, but it only becomes personal when someone we love is sent off to the war. The United States has been protected from wars on its soil for a long time. The recent threat of terror has somewhat changed this, but still in isolated incidents. We still don’t experience the ongoing hardship of living in a war zone. In these particular paintings, there is an ambiguity as to the affect of the financial crisis, of war, or of anything on these suburban American figures.
To me, these paintings are history paintings about the United States as an empire in its decline. I think newspapers are a great image for this, because they are also quickly becoming relics of the past. The homeless cover themselves with newspapers to keep warm. Dead bodies are covered with newspapers when there is nothing else which with to cover them. The figures in this series do not seem dead or homeless, but that tension is still there.
Formally, these paintings are densely detailed, reminiscent of Rococo, and a mixture of painting styles. To me these are visual equivalents for the excess that typifies the American dream and the disjointedness of what is going on in the world and how these figures experience it.