My investigation works to defy the notion that beauty and the grotesque are not mutually exclusive and to highlight the irony in the fact that they are usually related. In our modern culture, achieving popularized beauty standards must be done by going to unnatural means, and disfiguring the body in its organic form. This investigation is influenced by my upbringing in LA, classified by diet pills, injections, plastic surgery, bulimia, etc., all with the connotation that there is something elegant about it. In order to become beautiful we must embark on a journey with the extremely ugly.

Paint allows an artist to rework figures over and over, making it so there is a point when it is never fully finished, just one where the artist chooses to stop. There is a parallel in people trying to achieve beauty standards. The stage of how overworked the paint is shows the stage the subject is in achieving beauty standards. The abstraction in some pieces references an unfinished in achieving a paragon: close, but still needing to be refined. This is contrasted in works where the figure is overworked showing the effects of this endless refinery of a body.