A selection of works exhibited at Art League Houston, March 22nd–May 4th, 2019.
In 2016, after moving to Houston, Texas from Auckland, New Zealand, my forays to local museum collections sparked a return to painting. Using photographic images from the book Houston’s Forgotten Heritage as a starting point, my paintings re-interpret the content of these historical images, and render new relationships to the present through my use of color. I went on to explore photographic images from other sources, including YouTube videos and children’s encyclopedias from the 1950s. My paintings employ the use of saturated color and meticulous techniques in a bid to tease out previously unnoticed details, to highlight the construction of the source images, or to emphasize the mythological or symbolic qualities that exist in the mundane. In these paintings, I use color and compositional elements in a non-natural way to jolt the viewer out of taking what they see for granted, nudging them to accept instability of history as told through photographic images.
To view all the works, along with their accompanying texts, go to the archived website.