American Advertisement Versus Street Art

My sustained investigation emphasizes the portrayal of 1950’s and 1960’s American pop art and commercial culture into a looser, more contemporary setting. I reconstructed formal, found elements into new compositions to create a vintage, “street art” aesthetic. As I was reimagining pop art I took inspiration from work from the collaborations of Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, and graffiti. Repurposing formal elements found in well known art work and past decades of American advertising lead me to create collage-like paintings with a chaotic field of symbols, letters, and flattened images.  

I spent the year painting in mostly acrylic with hints of spray paint and marker. I mainly worked from photo references of road signs, graffiti, and street art which I traced from a projector onto my canvas. Experimentation between paint and photography was the most successful approach toward conveying my ideas in physical work. The incorporation of flattened brushwork and removal of subtlety made my paintings more bold and contrasted. I pushed the boundaries of bright color arrangements to slightly overwhelm my audience. Furthermore, I worked with small and large canvases to challenge myself with a variety of spaces to tell a story and portray my ideas.