A departure from his well-known, expressionistic depictions of the human face, Based on a True Story is an exploration of shape, texture and composition. A marriage of Biernot's fascination with cartographic topography and the abstract form, this series was born of the artist's desire to explore the unpredictable nature of his new found technique - a balance between "the creation and destruction of multiple layers of magazine pages, cardboard, packaging and paint." Biernot doesn't consider this technique to be collage, but rather a "structural element of [his] paintings." An experienced eye may be able to make out familiar shapes and forms, take a closer look at "Based on a True Story I" for instance and you can spot the snaking form of Rome's Tiber River. While not all pieces in this series depict a familiar city, they are a bird's eye view of various built environments, capturing growth and evolution in some, and devolution/a return to nature in others.
