This body of work continues my thinking about how the world sees people and how that differs from what the truth about a person really is. The layering of images on decorated backgrounds and pages of text talks about the things we do to hide our true selves from the world. It’s about how most people only see the outside – the surface decoration – and not the truths that lie behind the outer surface, inside the other person. Pretty, decorative, nice – but what does that have to do with what is inside? The unadorned, anonymous female figures that I draw say that what the world sees is just the packaging we were put in but did not choose for ourselves. But the outer physical shell is not the truth about a person any more than the personality that most of the world sees and thinks is the truth about us. The face and eyes are supposed to be the window that allows others to see inside, but that can be a lie. My figures have no window, because I don’t believe that it shows any more than what we want the world to see. You have to go beyond the surface, search through the layers, pick out the truth from all the surrounding surface decoration – the camouflage that hides the truth…the inside, from the world…from other people… from ourselves. There’s also a delusion here – that we can hide what’s inside. Sometimes people be see past the camouflage; see into you despite all attempts at hiding. Or maybe you can just enjoy what you see on...
As an artist working in the corporate world for a decade, I was stuck in cubicles and conference rooms when I’d have preferred to be in my studio painting. I’d been designing websites for other people rather than creating my own art. When I looked through the stacks and stacks of notes from unending project meetings and corporate training sessions, I realized that the conference room had become my studio. While designing large-scale internet applications for many different companies, I had also created small-scale works of art in the margins between my notes. These prints, from an exhibition entitled Paid Vacation: Drawings from Conference Rooms, are the result. The organic shapes, leaves, flowers, figures and animals illustrate my need to escape the hard cold geometrical world of computers and technology and cubicles. The flowing lines and shapes were an antidote to the rigidity of my “day job” full of pixels and lines of code and corporate red tape. Making these drawings saved my sanity! The titles were created using an online tool I found called a corporate bullshit generator. Another symbol of the duality of my corporate vs. artistic life! ...
