Decoys explores the tension between the exhausting performance of daily life and the encroachment of traumatic memories. The outer personae that I present the world conceal a history of trauma and abuse; thus my daily performance of working manhood becomes a kind of decoy. The act of painting a self-portrait that is suggestive rather than declarative is itself an act of hiding in plain sight.
As an artifact of process, the work is meant to invoke the free associations of memory. Subject and surface weave in and out of each other in order to invoke the way that trauma memories seep into mundane daily activities. I built up the surface with layers of redacted text and a variety of media and collage elements. I then dug back into the surface in order to reveal hidden text and images in surprising, unsuspected ways.
The excavated pseudo-narrative of the redacted text, covered up by layers of imagery and material, suggests the way that the history of my life is selected, parsed, integrated, recalled or ignored from moment to moment. The fluid, evanescent nature of memories makes them act as decoys, elusive and allusive, often leaving me to doubt the truth of lived experiences yet reeling from their echoes.