Recently, I have enhanced my role in directing the viewer as he or she approaches my paintings. By maintaining a height of around five inches while increasing the width to around eight feet, I allow the viewer to have an intimate interaction with the piece in time, reading information much like he or she would from a book, comic strip, or film.
This format links directly to the passage of time that occurs in the imagery of my paintings. All of the images are from the past and are sometimes accompanied by other images looking back on them. It is my hope that, by forcing the viewer to physically move from one side of a painting to another, he or she will relate this passage of time to the content of the painting.
Amidst my friends and family members, I have begun to incorporate people and objects from television shows, films, and books that I find familiar and relevant to the painting’s narrative. Confined within their medium or not, these figures, objects, and settings communicate openly with my family and friends. I do not lend illusionism only to that which is actually in the room; volume and flatness can make posters become windows and windows become stage sets. The people in the paintings are influenced by artificial representations to the point where they are no longer artificial.
By integrating fictional characters into domestic situations, I compare the relationship between viewers and television characters. I choose moments on screen that display palpable emotion in attempts to analyze the relationships between the characters and the affect that they have on our own real relationships.
In my most recent work, three-dimensional constructions are merging with two-dimensional painting. At times obvious and at times subtle, these protrusions lure the viewer into the paintings and bridge the gap between his space and that of the illusion. Once within this world, domestic characters and film stars converse with each other and wait for interpretations from the giants that are standing two inches away.