statement

Looking at a painting is an entirely theatrical ritual of our culture. Similar to theater, a painting uses obviously fake tools to create a believable dialogue between the stage, or surface and the viewer. To critique and draw attention to this dynamic of viewing, I use layered imagery, selecting what is opaque and decipherable and what is transparent and ambiguous. I hope to make compositions or scenes that are clearly set up, or posed, but like any good performance, the audience is seduced anyways.

To forcefully remind the viewer they are partaking in looking at an illusion, I exploit visual tools; the negative, highly saturated color notes, and diffused lighting adjacent to suffused lighting. The figures seem set up or fixed in a non-portrait like, non-eventful, still pictorial context. But by utilizing stragems of perception, and displaying a dramatic dynamic between the subject and the space it occupies, the initially still scene becomes ephemeral. I hope to make the fallacies of the work, or optical trickery, become so obvious and intentional that the viewer is not only lured into the scene like in a convincing performance, but self reflexively realizes and becomes aware that they are being seduced by something fake.

bio

born: 1988, Westlake, California

education

Laguna College of Art & Design, MFA 2014

University of California, Los Angeles, BA, 2010

selected awards/honors

Eli & Edith Broad Fine Art Scholarship Award, UCLA, 2010

Eli & Edith Broad Fine Art Scholarship Nominee ( selected 4 yrs in a row) 2006-2010

J.Paul Getty Museum Docent and Volunteer: Los Angeles, California, 2011- 2013

selected solo or two-person exhibits

Juried Exhibition, UCLA, Charlie White Gallery, Los Angeles, California, 2010

selected group shows

Future Tense, CES Contemporary Gallery, Laguna Beach, California, 2013

LCAD Exhibit, Laguna Museum of Art, Laguna Beach, California, 2013

Summer Show,Tiny Stage Gallery, Culver City, Los Angeles, California, 2012

UCLA: From the Window to the Wall, A Juried Exhibition, Los Angeles, California, 2010