Since the beginning of civilization, atrocities and conflict have occurred constantly; what has changed in our era is the speed, convenience and aggressiveness of commerce to accelerate our opportunities to learn about them. Through our culture we are acclimated to the absurdity of viewing strife as simultaneously interrupted and distracted by products to bring serenity to our unbalanced individualistic worlds. By this corporate ran system, an audience may never notice the effort put into manipulating our viewpoints - to explain a story in a certain angle or a certain amount (be it video, words on a page, or photographs), to keep us informed but as well detached. My work responds to this awareness by mimicking tactics used by news media. The appropriated images ask for your attention, aiming to lure you in with the attraction of realism battling against commodity to win your gaze.
The process of silkscreen, the finer family member of the mass media image, allows me to parody the systemic platforms used in magazines - mass produced, bright colors, and juxtaposed compositions of spectacle and disaster laid next to well plotted advertisements. My paintings are meant to seduce, but not meant to exploit the image. The effort put forth to reproduce the image in a fine art material attracts the viewer to look longer, not only at the hand that made it but also to ruminate on what is going on in the original photograph. For myself, both ways of working address the strategic bombardments of commercials we encounter and question whether the strength of an image suffices curiosity and creates assumptions in the same vein an ad convinces and allures us into a purchase.
