to encounter a painting
Throughout 2021 and 2022 I encountered a plethora of paintings throughout numerous institutions including the National Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Gallery in Washington D.C. With this project in the back of my mind, I began photographing details within paintings made between the 17th and 20th centuries. At no point was I interested in documenting these works, rather I was interested in recording visual moments that might exist outside of their compositions in an aesthetic, cinematic, or dynamic way. This process provided me with a familiar, visual space within which I could consider historical artwork, connoisseurship, curation, convention, and aesthetics.
Paying close attention to aesthetic details and gestural motifs, I began to respond to specific images photographically in order to decipher how they might operate in a contemporary idiom. By photographing these images in familiar spaces, referring to them in my own still lives and compositions, and interacting with them through layers of both physical and digital interventions, I have been able to recall the initial experiences of curiosity, sublime, wit, and respect that I encountered while photographing the original works. I am deeply fascinated with the ability that specific motifs possess to persist throughout time and continue to resonate universally… I believe that these gestures have been fundamental in the makeup of conventions that have been relied on to keep audiences engaged. As I continue to cultivate my identity as both an artist and an art historian, this work has fundamentally allowed me to intersect the academic tradition of object study with my own creative reconsideration of digital reproduction.