Richardson Family Art Gallery

Wofford College - Spartanburg, SC

I, along with my peers, have been thrust into the age of technology, forcing our eyes down to our phones – worrying about our online presence rather than creating genuine connections with the people immediate to us. The mental health of young men, including the anxiety than comes with social media, is of great interest to me as I slowly try to care less about what people think of who and what I am. Concerned with the status of human-interaction, I am interested in understanding our unfixed subjectivity as it constantly shifts and molds to the environment like a self-sufficient organism. My paintings focus on the distorting or caricaturing of the human form as a psychological figuring, a limbo between the real and surreal. My work encompasses common motifs of masks and white fences referring to the different barriers we put up in different social situations to feel secure within ourselves. The connections we make in today’s world are built on how many followers we have, eliminating the intrinsic value of each of us. The danger that I am trying to keep at bay is the unknown. I cannot imagine what subconscious barrier I will put in place to compensate for it.