Birthday Party

I work from found vernacular photographs taken at parties I've never attended. These anonymous events evoke a familiarity that allows me to manipulate and fit my own memories and narratives into the frame. By rendering candid snapshots of strangers, I establish a distance from their stories that enables me to overlay my own narrative, making the individuals feel recognizable. In this way, I frustrate the predictability of celebratory spaces and events through painted interpretation. My work investigates the disillusionment and disappointment embedded in these images and transposed from personal memories. Unexpected compositions and saturated, analogous color make the spaces and events strange and fleshy. Ambiguous forms and purposeful voids create a psychological field. The people are depicted with a sense of uneasy separation, failing to interact with one another or with their environment, and their suggested facial expressions, with blurred and omitted features, reveal an uncertain familiarity that acknowledges this mental and physical separation. Through manipulating these bodies and spaces, the work evokes memories of shortcomings and feelings of discomfort.