Description
Even with a degree in critical studies, I have never really thought of myself as someone with all the right words for any given situation. Though I strive to build a powerful lexicon, I have recently been asking myself, why and for whom? I have a particularly strong disposition to overthink and hold anxiety about trivial things. Overthinking, coupled with a mood disorder, can make life nauseatingly complicated. I identified these complications through a fair amount of rumination, and they arise from my pathologized anxiety concerning pervasive social expectations. We live in a society that demands us to rise to or above the expectations it sets forth. These are expectations that seem to materialize out of thin air and take precedent without a literal dialogue between the social rule and its constituents. A salient example of the abstract materialization of social rules influencing social behavior before being explicitly taught is the use of “road rules” concerning a child observing the act of driving. Over time a child will inherently learn, for the most part, proper driving etiquette through self-observation and cognition before the maxims of consequence are uttered or explained. This cavalier attitude towards awareness of personal actions and those actions’ social rule correlates has perplexed me for years; how can you half know something? How can one do and experience life without knowing how or why? It is here, with these deep questions in mind, where I begin the process of learning and accepting the fractured reality of a mind made uneasy in hopes of finding a happy medium within potent memories, experiences and emotions. In other words, this body of work, Memories Americana: Finding Peace Through Metacognition and Memory, is an attempt to learn from my personal past by looking into my memories to regain parts of myself lost to circumstance and pervasive social expectations. The process of looking back is often haunting, it is like you are floating through space and time, never getting a full glimpse or mental picture of the place the memory happened. Instead, memories are more like a puzzle or mosaic of sorts. Memories are the pieces, and each memory draws its value and context from the pieces surrounding it. In order to see the whole memory more clearly, one must step back and observe the bigger picture. My hope is that the paintings in this body of work command the viewer to do just that when viewing my work—step back, look and just experience it.
