Text on Method

Abstraction Unrealistic coloring animal fantasy anxiety of identity cultural roles macabre horror satire humor

chasing whims, or spurts of curiosity until i am not interested anymore or to figure out why i was interested in the first place I have a thought that I should do something, and it seems better to try it than forget about it.

I initially started working with self portraiture as a way to stop pointing the camera at seemingly random things. If i wanted to understand my practice, or desire to have one, it seemed logical to try and grasp that urge via exploring myself-since i guess thats what all this is supposed to be about anyway. As I continued on path that project of self portraits, I was just tired of talking about the female body, and feminism. and in what seemed like a masterful idea, I jumped right from my body to big, belted galloway cows from my hometown. It immediately felt like some grand thing to have stumbled upon, and that working with cows was going to some how deliver to me exactly what it was I was trying to find. I think I became more comfortable working with animals than with models or even friends. I think partly because we’re all so narcissistic (us humans) and I think I can make images that are just as moving and interesting about a creature which people might have a harder time seeing themselves in.

Farm animals are usually depicted in a pretty humorous way. Goofy pictures of cows, or sheep. But when you blast them with expensive lights, they take on a more refined and stylist look. Its like placing a farm animal in some high budget fashion shoot. What I find so interesting about the fashion aesthetic is that it reates a fantasy about society. that were all beautiful, and having these grand and otherworldly experiences. I like applying that same, uncommon view to animals. With out these images, there is no glamor for animals. I know cows are not science fiction sex objects, but now they look like it.

trying not to push my work too far away from myself but focusing too heavily on the specifics of animal rights, because I guess its pretty obvious that I am sensitive to that. But what kind of escapes me are the specifics of why some people are more prone to feel empathetic to animals, and to the cruellty of others, and some people are so cold and seem to skate by totally unphased. I guess that also can refer to my interest in horror, grotesque, violence, and the essentially dark and sinister. The dark literature and poetry of someone like Maldoror just seems more honest and true than something that is lyrical and naturally light and beautiful. some one like walt whitman never appealed to me, but the dark tales of romance and drama in a joyce carol oates story, or the macabre fantasy of HP Lovecraft.