My paintings are based on photographs of displays from natural history museums - representations of the animal world, ethnological artifacts, and dioramas. I approach the museum presentation itself as a cultural fact.
The random visual elements that occur when looking at and photographing the vitrine are intrinsic to the painted image: Reflections on the glass, lighting effects, and fuzzy edges belong to the image: they server as distancing factors and signal that "this is not first-hand reality," that it's mediated. My painting process is similar color reproduction, only its done by hand. Thin transparent layers of primary colors superimposed on one another gradually make up the image. Sometimes, I use thick gestural brushstrokes in the background that interfere with the image.
An analytic approach to painting itself is one of my major artistic concerns. I like to position critical questions of "realism" as it relates to reality as well as the notions and traditions of realism in painting.
