Artist. Creator. Illustrator.

Appropriation is something that I have always been fascinated with ever since I studied the contemporary and modern art of the 20th century in an art history class during my junior year of college.  I love the idea of taking something that already exists out in the world, especially things found in the media such as an advertisement, social media postings or a news story, and altering it in a way that reflects uncommon stances, voices, opinions, or perspectives that aren't normally prominent in the media.  I am very interested in creating art that appropriates images from pop culture or even “steals” images off social media to create art that makes people question the daily relationship they have with mass media outlets.  Many people have a distaste for works of art that use appropriation in them; however,  like Austin Kleon says in his book, Steal Like an Artist, “what a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere” and that “all creative work builds on what came before”.  By appropriating found visual images from media and putting my own commentary on each of them, I want to plant the seed in people’s heads that make them analyze their relationship to pop culture along with social media and how the image of oneself on these platforms can be completely skewed from what, in actuality, is true to reality. 
My body of artwork is composed of pieces that utilize a mixture of analog mediums such as ink, gouache, and oil paint along with digital and found images which come together as a whole body of work that is revisionary when it comes to digesting pop culture.  A lot of my earlier work mainly focused on the human figure because, ever since I can remember, I have been overwhelmingly fascinated by the connection of the mind, the physical body,  and how outside influences like media images can shape that relationship. The goal of my artwork is to truly make people reevaluate what’s fed to each one of them through media platforms on a daily basis, what they are exposed to in these social media platforms, and the effect it has on one’s own reality, as a whole.  Our society has separated reality from our image on social media to the point where social media has almost become a simulation.  I believe that a photograph on the internet merely began, as Jean Baudrillard explains in her essay called Simulacra and Simulations, as a “reflection of basic reality”, but nowadays a photograph on social media platforms has reached the final phase of the image where “it bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum”.  In politically driven news articles, bikini bod selfies on social media and hot celebrity tabloids reality has been sculpted and edited into a form that is merely a simulation of reality and can’t be considered a legitimate representation any longer.  Through my art I would like to take these examples of simulated media and put a twist on them in a two dimensional format to show a glimpse at what the possible reality behind each could be.  I draw a lot of my inspiration Pop art especially from artists such as Andy Warhol, The Kaplan Twins and Ashley Longshore.  The Kaplan Twins’ art work I resonate with a lot because they are millennials who decided to make artwork that makes fun of their own generation and creates commentary on what this generation of millennial value in the “life” they are living (McVey).  Their work is such an inspiration to me because of their ability to keep up the Pop art way of having a “breakdown between high and low art forms” and, when it comes to my own work,  I incorporate bright color, iconic pop culture references and underlying commentary through that breakdown in my work because of these artists.  
A lot of my art work tends to zone in on commenting on the media and how it is a spectacle in itself.  In Guy Debord’s The Society of The Spectacle, he talks about the spectacle as “appear[ing] at once as society itself, as a part of society and as a means of unification. As a part of society, it is that sector where all attention, all consciousness, converges. Being isolated ­­ and precisely for that reason ­­ this sector is the locus of illusion and false consciousness; the unity it imposes is merely the official language of generalized separation” (Debord).  From my experience with social media and seeing how it has affected the world we live in today; I believe it’s my duty as an artist to unveil the spectacle that is social media in society and all of the illusions and fake living that goes on which is further and further separating us as a whole.  The way I do this is by using traditional art techniques such as drawing and painting with traditional, analog materials such as pen and ink, gouache, and oil paint, and incorporate popular content from media outlets to catch the viewer off guard and make them reflect on the impact of all the information, jargon and straight-up lies that are spewed at them repetitively throughout the day through this spectacle-like-simulation that we call mass media.