The more I learn different mediums of creating, the more interested I am in seeing the ways they can interact with one another. In this series, I combine painting, collage, photoshop, photography, and CGI to create worlds that exist somewhere in between the fabricated and the reality.

Dinner for One

I find myself very interested in these old medieval illustrations. They are so intricate and their colors are beautiful- while out of context they can range from odd to grotesque to outright weird. I knew I wanted to incorporate this beautiful illustration into this piece. I painted all of the objects except the fake roses, because I wanted to keep that aspect of reality while making fun of the fakeness of the one photographed object. Then I added a pattern onto the background, because I liked the extreme 2D look of it, and the strangeness of the way the shadows are cut off at the edge of the tablecloth. Then I added in the CGI peas on the right plate. I liked how unreal they looked- like they were pretending to be something they weren’t. I think the entire piece feels performative in some way- everything is warped and fake and out of place. And I like that uneasiness.

Grapes of Wrath

This piece was a lot more intuitive. I loved the background pattern, and wanted to try and paint over it and recreate it to give it more of a canvas look. I wanted this piece to keep that main element of photography, unlike the last image, but I wanted it to fall somewhere in between a real photo and a fake image- thus I overlaid the hand with another image. Keeping the shadow in this one was very important to me- I wanted that sense of grounding and space not found in the previous image- I wanted all these elements to feel like they existed within the same world at the same time.

Suzanne

I was very excited about creating this piece. I found this old rusty bucket and loved the texture of the rust. I painted the outside of the bucket to replicate value, then painted in the water on the inside. The trick was to paint in the water to match the perspective and make it look both real and fake at the same time. But something was still missing- that interaction with this water to really sell the illusion. I took this painting of this flower and composited the stem to come out of the water. Now, the flower interacts with both the foreground and the background in a way that physically makes no sense. What was there first- the flower or the painting? Then I replaced the ground with a 2D illustration, so the bucket now appears as both an illustration and an object. This piece plays most with the relationship between 2D and 3D objects- and how the camera can both lie to the viewer and reveal the truth.