I know you know this story: minority kid grows up in America; dissonance ensues. You eat dried pork floss and mayo sandwiches for school lunch; you pretend to know who Jesus is so you won’t get bullied–it’s an Everywoman story. But it’s also mine and I’m running with it.
Comics and Chinese brush painting: stuff I’ve grown up seeing. I have always been attracted to the bravado and economy of a bold, black outline. The faux-scroll paintings pull inspiration from both of these influences and their commonalities now seem so obvious to me after completing these works: their combination of text and image, and play between flat graphics and spatial distortion.
Traditional landscapes are updated to include the San Gabriel Valley, Jonathan Gold, and mountaintop mining. A number of these works expand on a series of narrative drawings about my mother that I have worked on intermittently for over a decade. I am aiming for a bit of lyricism and irony. Am I hedging my bets? Maybe. Do I seem defensive to you? Perhaps. But it’s just where I’m at these days. You know what I mean.