Washed Out, Graphite, 50 x 50 inches
Obscured, Graphite, 50 x 38 inches
Ooze, Graphite, 24 x 24 inches
Slathered, Graphite, 50 x 38 inches
Cream, Graphite, 38 x 38 inches
Trickle, Graphite, 24 x 24 inches
Smeared, Graphite, 50 x 38 inches
Blocked, Graphite, 50 x 67 inches
Crested, Graphite, 50 x 50 inches
Luminescence #1, Graphite, 50 x 50 inches
Night Look, Graphite, 38 x 38 inches
Luminescence #2, Graphite, 50 x 50 inches
Xerox, in the studio, six 50 x 38 inch graphite drawings, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, 2011
SURFACED
2012-2013
“Surfaced” acknowledges the relationship between photography, painting and drawing in portraiture. I take photographs as I paint and pour liquids onto myself, using my face as a canvas. The photo shoot references the practice of drawing and painting; then the final graphite drawing references photography. The boundaries between the mediums are broken down and the processes are interwoven.
The images depart from the framing of traditional portraiture. The viewer is not given an entire bust of the subject, rather the frame zooms into up-close sections of the face. The cropping pushes the face to the surface of the paper, making the figure more ambiguous. Flesh becomes abstracted: obliterated by paint on the skin, distorted by the eye of the camera lens, or smeared by the glass of a Xerox machine.