My work is fueled by an underlying interest in the tension between my adolescent escapist fantasies and the realization of my own mortality and maturation—both physically and emotionally. Pulling from my database of the visual culture of my childhood, I explore the relationship between the universal identification of these pop-culture forms and the abstraction that occurs when additive layers obliterate each other. Establishing a highly mechanical and systematic process for demolishing sentimental material has forced me to engage with the mortality of the image and its relationship to my own bodily mortality.
Superhero comic book illustrations serve as the initial reference point for the majority of my paintings. Working in monochrome, the iconic subjects are disguised and abstracted through the process of layering, covering, cropping, and piling figures on top of one another. Desaturation of the image eliminates the immediate recognition of these icons through their color palette; however the spirit of the form remains intact through the energy and linear mark-making that are indicative of the comic book. The onslaught of brushstrokes unabashedly shreds to smithereens the full formation of an image or memory of an image, and simply succumbs to the poignancy of the inchoate.
These caped crusaders have been with me since childhood—a vortex in which to escape the banality of reality and the human condition. An avenue into a world of fantasy where protagonists may have the gift or curse of immorality, these metanarratives have provided a venue for expansive experiences outside of the limitations of my corporeal and tangible situation. Immersed within a field of severed parts of icons, I become confronted with the raw authenticity of the mark and the painting’s maturation. Lost amongst the fragments of these characters of my childhood, I long for the disintegrating innocence of my adolescence.