Can you pick some favorite works of yourself the world, dealing with recurring social themes of identity, from recent or time ago? Describe them, please love, and desire. I create characters in order to probe my own questions about identity. I think of them as portrait from the idea to finished work.
projections fashioned out of borrowed imagery reminiscent One recent painting that is at least a bit curious to me of cinematic culture of the 1950s and 60s, other paintings, is “Niagaralounge”. It’s a painting of my muse, Jean Se- photos, or vintage books. I construct them to consciousberg, who was featured in so many of the Jeannie grisa- ly mirror cinematic tropes—projection, montage, and, of ille paintings. These were paintings loosely based on Jean course, the fabrications of celebrity personae—as a way Luc Godard’s French new wave film Breathless, a series of to insinuate a complication or disturbance. Increasingly, works lasting nearly seven years from 2005-2012. She re- their intrusion or mediation affect a redressing of the figappears in this later work from my Niagara series, a new set ural form. of paintings completed in full color and based on another film, Henry Hathaway’s Technicolor American noir Niagara From the pinknblue series, Rhead (2001) is an exam(1956). Here she is portrayed not just as the model, but ple where scale shifts mix with art references and mimic as the artist where I have included some of “her work” in cinematic montage to create a fractured figure. Misfitted the background. These images of paintings comes from my men (2003-2005), a later series, proposed the portrait disown private artistic experiments, works that may become persed across a time-line. The body as multiplicity is mobilized. Feigning coherency, it exhibits conditions of flux, something more substantial down the road. transience, or transformation. In the Jeannie series, the Your works look both so contemporary and paintings represented the Jean Seberg character as more vintage. Who are the hyperrealistic subjects of of a continuum of mother, lover, and self. As if by culturyour paintings and where did you find your al or historic inscription, I wanted her role to change from inspirations? painting to painting, adapting to changing roles of model-mother (jeanniefornarina), fertive love, or ephebic male My figurative work is largely autobiographical, function- (jeanniesongie). ing as personal memoir. It is my own response to life and
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