Mass visual information is an accepted part of our day-to-day existence. Television, video, film and advertisements have become our emotional fix; the characters take us on a fictitious journey that affects our psyche in different ways.
“The context within which we experience an event will determined how that event is encoded and retained.” (Oxford Companion to the Mind. - Richard L Gregory. 1987) The media, with its appropriation of painted images by past masters, has created a specific genre that provokes an audience into a stereotypical form of interpretation. My work is concerned with the re-introduction of these images as paintings within a contemporary context, enhancing their ambiguity and giving them a true physical presence away form the celluloid screen. “ The artists of my generation feel that they can borrow freely from any time and place to construct our own image. So called pluralism means that you can locate yourself in different periods of time.” (Eric Fischl 2000, Arthur C. Danto, 2001) I am concerned with the metamorphosis of the image so that it becomes as high art, an icon, my interpretation of visual information portrayed in paint. “A famous deffinition by Emile Zola called a work of art “ a corner of nature seen through a temperament” the temperament or pesonality of the artist, his selective preferences is part of the transformation.” (Art and Illusion, Gombrich, 2002) The resultant painted image takes on a whole new meaning, it becomes an ambiguous personification of the original, a materialistic and honest sign of a modern culture.
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