Important Conversations in Midwestern Brown
This body of work, a brown and blue series of figure paintings incorporating speech bubbles, focuses on talk. Talk, as in what is said, what isn’t said, how much is said, who says it, to whom, and why – more wholly, communication. The sort of communication that stomps out silence and peace with the need to exhaust one’s frustration with the commonly unfulfilling, lonely nature of contemporary life. “The double tragedy of human subjects alienated from themselves, yet desperate to communicate with others; actors whose words are forever missing each other at precisely the same point. Sometimes this is funny” (John Cussans). Presented in candid snapshots of quotidian existence, our utterances appear in all its glory and disgrace. My effort is to paint a tribute to “the middle” and a serious examination of talk for reflexivity and appreciation.
The figures in these paintings find themselves situated in a very uncomfortable place. The bleak emptiness of their brown surroundings speaks to their own emptiness, their seeming lack of significance to the world around them, and their alienation from it. These figures are the people I know: Midwestern, middle-class Americans each with their own stories and shared struggle. They find themselves awkwardly cropped in both composition and dialogue so as to share the discomfort with the viewer.
The dialogue/ monologue they speak is not absurd, an inside joke, or simply personal; it consists of what many of us experience or have said. This excess of talk shows its mass and interference in three-dimensional speech bubbles. Merging comic-book style speech bubbles and realistic figure painting thereby adds to both the series’ humorous quality and unsettling disposition, not to mention ruining the viewer’s chance to enjoy a painting’s normally quiet, decorative quality.
Thematically these works are related by my concern and frustration with society’s preferred style of communication. Dealing as a child and even to now (though less often) with orders to “speak up!” or that I “don’t talk enough,” my resistance has weakened and I have been forced to adapt and participate in a practice which I feel never second-guesses itself as it lays victims in its path, and blurs conscientious thought with its passive-aggressive, banal misery. However, this is the practice of the people and land I love, so I have learned to live with it and understand it more fully and optimistically.
The figures in these paintings find themselves situated in a very uncomfortable place. The bleak emptiness of their brown surroundings speaks to their own emptiness, their seeming lack of significance to the world around them, and their alienation from it. These figures are the people I know: Midwestern, middle-class Americans each with their own stories and shared struggle. They find themselves awkwardly cropped in both composition and dialogue so as to share the discomfort with the viewer.
The dialogue/ monologue they speak is not absurd, an inside joke, or simply personal; it consists of what many of us experience or have said. This excess of talk shows its mass and interference in three-dimensional speech bubbles. Merging comic-book style speech bubbles and realistic figure painting thereby adds to both the series’ humorous quality and unsettling disposition, not to mention ruining the viewer’s chance to enjoy a painting’s normally quiet, decorative quality.
Thematically these works are related by my concern and frustration with society’s preferred style of communication. Dealing as a child and even to now (though less often) with orders to “speak up!” or that I “don’t talk enough,” my resistance has weakened and I have been forced to adapt and participate in a practice which I feel never second-guesses itself as it lays victims in its path, and blurs conscientious thought with its passive-aggressive, banal misery. However, this is the practice of the people and land I love, so I have learned to live with it and understand it more fully and optimistically.