I am interested in capturing ephemeral moments that reflect the dynamics
of experience and memory. While I use my smartphone to capture fleeting
moments of everyday life, I recognize that this technology is changing the way in
which people interact with each other and their surroundings, as well as how they
engage with memory. Often body language and focus of the individual suggests
emotional distance between figures, and highlights a growing pattern of
detachment from the here and now. People use the camera on their phones as a
placeholder to capture and store moments rather than rely on the memory of their
experience. As a result they are often more focused on documenting the moment
rather than experiencing it.
Working from my own photographs, I attempt to subvert the decay of
memory by allowing the photographic conventions to dictate certain aspects like
linearity, structure, focus and blur. Under these conditions, I explore the
associations to smartphone snapshots and their prolific presence within our
society. However, unlike a quick scroll through Instagram, I absorb myself within
the photograph, within that moment.
Trying to harness a moment and a feeling of human experience from a
photograph, over a period of time, leads to strategies different from those used
when painting from direct observation. I tend to distort the palette and play with
the relationship between illusion and painted matter. While the painting from afar
reads as representational, as the viewer approaches, the marks reveal
themselves as paint. I believe discoveries such as these are important because
they relate to the incompleteness of visual memory, appealing to aspects of
memory that are felt rather than seen. Not only is this interchange between
representation and paint important for its appeal to memory, but it also confirms
the object as not merely a representational photograph, but a living, breathing
moment.