Chatroom

Oil on panel
30"x40"
2007

As a figurative artist I wanted to do a subject that represents the times in the digital age of communications.

This piece explores how most communication is done now, which is mostly online whether through e-mail, texting or in chatrooms, and what effect digital communications have on socialization and human interaction in the world today. This particular piece is a representation of a person talking in a chatroom behind a computer. It depicts the hours on end that a person spends restrained in a chair and desk and an unorthodox view of the online world of communication verses direct communication and how addicting and sometimes exhausting it can be.

My work ultimately is concentrated on rawness, crude in quality; not tempered or refined by taste but marked by vulnerability and exposure. The subjects that I paint are usually oppressed and are trying to break free. It's times that represent to me life—and many people trying to break free from their own complexities and bondage or behaviors in regards to subjection to social environments or conditions.

My aim is to create a provoking and moving piece that is direct and without mystery. I also use my art as a vehicle to bring awareness to certain social issues and state of the human condition specifically using the gesture as a medium to translate this expression.

Conceptually I play upon influences and of my own personal interpretation of the persona and society. My work is not concerned only with figure painting in general, but concerned with struggle within people as individuals.

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