ARTIST STATEMENT

I have dedicated the past 10 years merging oil painting, multispectral photography, and video into transmedia artworks that activate the forensic imagination. “As much poetic as empirical, the forensic imagination imbues evidence with story, highlighting the ways in which both fiction and fact are socially constructed.”  My artwork exists physically and across digital platforms employing an investigative aesthetic that “seeks to integrate, but not homogenize multiple viewpoints”. The subjects I work with are informed by field work and historical accounts recorded through writing, photography, and film.

My creative process begins with research, sketches, and photo collages to prepare a composition. Next I paint using many layers of photosensitive materials such as lead, charcoal, and phosphor powder on a stretched linen canvas. Each layer is an image that is covered by the next. The invisible images are retrieved later with photography that uses X-ray, infrared, and ultraviolet light to look below the surface and beyond our normal vision. The forensic photographs reveal hidden information and provide authentic evidence of its material history. Each painting contains 4 photographs arranged into a video sequence. When seen together, the images suggest stories that question the social construction of truth.

 1.Forensic Architecture
 2.Investigative Aesthetics

ANATOMY OF A PAINTING