As many of you have noticed, I've been painting a number of portraits recently (much to you're delight/disgust). Since I am not entirely sure what I'm thinking, I've decided to write it out for myself, and for the curious bunch that would to know. SO! for those of you who have nothing better to do, carry on. (You can skip along to the bottom if you want the readers digest version of this.)

I started off thinking about photos, specifically photos people take of themselves and post on sites such as deviantart, myspace, facebook, nexopia to name a few. These sites have become sort of "people catalogues", an interesting idea in itself. Catalogues gave me the idea of making the portraits product like. Rather than using the angles and outstretched-arm portraits seen commonly on the sites I mentioned above, I decided to use an angle and a backdrop that would make the situation seem clinical and controlled.

Also, on the internet, and deviantart especially, are the portraits people paint (or use photoshop to make it look as though they painted them). These are very peculiar to me because they always display people with flawless skin (like in advertisements and on fashion models) perfect features, phenomenally dramatic lighting, and often deal with extreme emotions like love, sadness, or looking gorgeous. There are of course digital paintings that this isn't the case, but for simplicity's sake, let's stick to fantasy images. These images are also sexual. You can determine whether the artist is male or female by looking at how they portray the sexes in their paintings/manipulations. Female artists tend to paint male figures that are feminine, or feminine women. Male artists tend to paint muscular men, or women with pronounced sexual features.

So, it comes as no big surprise to me that my portraits aren't very popular. They aren't sexual, they aren't about being gorgeous, they are exact representations of people (Well, I think they're gorgeous, but thats just me and my love of painting skin). One of the things that came out in painting and posting these on the internet, is that I realized that I'm working in two separate worlds. One is the internet world, and the other is the contemporary art world. On the internet, my work is subject to the popular "paintover" comment due in part to the small size they are displayed onscreen, whereas in the physicial world where these images are printed to a large size, people can see all the marks and immediately understand them as paintings. People also react to them differently. On the internet, people are used to being able to have a certain about of distance between themselves and an image because those images are unrealistic enough to be comfortable.

Among these portraits are people that I know, people I don't know, and people that I've invented. This simulates the internet situation were I see pictures of people I both know and don't know, and the people that have been invented or modified (via photoshop or some other program.) This is why it makes sense to do these portraits in photoshop. Photomanipulated images are often manipulated in photoshop, "photochopped". Some people don't paint people because it is easier to manipulate them in, however I realized that people look closer at painted pictures than at photographs or manipulated photographs. I think this is due in part to people trying to find the human error in paintings and also because an image that has been painted is digested by another persons mind before you look at it. Because you know it's been painted, it becomes meaningful because subconsciously that person made certain mistakes and you try to interpret those mistakes. A photograph we more naturally take as a "Fact". Human error creates meaning for people.

Photography changed art. We now use angles and perspectives in paintings that wouldn't have been possible without the camera. Photoshop changed photography. Photography was once a more or less a record of real life, and photoshop has changed it into a record of what we would like life to be. Advertisements show people what they want, and an advertisers job is to find out what people want. As a result, in most advertisements everyone is ageless and beautiful, something we would all like. Here, on sites such as deviantart, people are inserted into fantasy worlds that are primative (By that I mean we have more technology) compared to ours, in which the figures are beautiful, the location is exotic and beautiful, and the stories are exciting. I think that this is a more extreme, and perhaps more truthful account of what people desire than the advertisements. People want to be beautiful, ageless, and in situations that are exciting, situations that are new and different from ours. Modern day life is so easy and peril-free that it's boring. Digital illustration is significant because it is a record of what the internet community (specifically this internet community) wants. My paintings are important, I believe, because they disrupt that fantasy. And by doing so, they draw attention to it.

I'm not too sure how I feel about saying all that, I'm not certain of it myself and I'd like you to consider it and then draw your own conclusions.

And now, the Readers Digest:

-Photography changed art, photoshop changed photography
-photography shows the physical world, photoshop changes it to show what we want to see, because manipulating light etc doesn't quite do it.
-illustrations on the internet depict what the artists and the audience want, and this is important because the internet audience is enormous.
-instead of showing the fantasy that most people expect from digital art, I show images that appear factual, but are not necessarily.
-my series is like a catalogue of faces, and based off of sites such as facebook and myspace.
-sites like myspace and facebook "sell" people to eachother.
-These are not paintovers, if you were wondering. I can prove it.

this idea needs to be trimmed and refined, but thats what I've got so far.

some of my influences : gerhart richter, vija celmins, and chuck close. For you keeners out there.