I was 7 years old when I learned that Christopher Columbus did not, in fact, discover America.
Turns out the History channel was more honest than my history teacher.
It was a watershed moment that taught me to always explore beyond the initial reading.
Fast forward to 2014 as a graduate student at the University of Michigan, I encountered the research paper, Forensics and Microscopy in Authenticating Works of Art, by Peter Paul Biro. He became the first forensic art analyst to use human contact prints to successfully authenticate the work of J.M.W. Turner by matching the artist’s fingerprints left on his canvases. Mr. Biro’s pioneering work merged the fields of art, forensic science, and historical study. It inspired me to examine my own process and launched an obsession to materialize the layered nature of history. With the help of the Williamstown Conservation Center in Williamstown, Massachusetts, I developed a way to combine oil painting with multi-spectral photographic techniques such as X-rays, infrared, and ultraviolet light that are used by conservators to authenticate artwork.
My process, that I call Forensic Painting, uses materials that react in unique ways to different wavelengths of light. I begin by applying layers of lead, charcoal, phosphor powder and oil paint. Each layer is an image that is covered by the subsequent layers. The buried images are retrieved with photographic documentation. Working in this way transforms the painting into frames of a film. The sequential images suggest narrative relationships like a flashback or a jump cut. This form of imaginative viewing can be compared to the reconstruction of events based on visual evidence during a legal trial where the goal is to present facts and offer interpretations.
As I first learned with Columbus, the history of America is rife with revision and cover-ups. In previous artworks, like those included in the work samples, I focused on accounts of civil rights and resistance as it manifests around dining tables and lunch counters. These histories are still in danger of being erased, obscured, or whitewashed. My aim is that by combining painting, conservation photography, and forensic analysis I can encourage people to look below the surface for a more complete truth.
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