For the last 6 months I’ve been working on a series of paintings that are based on polished Airstream trailers from the mid-20th century. Each painting emphasizes the distortion that is visible in the highly reflective metal of the surface. The paintings were inspired by amateur photographs taken by Airstream enthusiasts. When the images are translated with paint, the contorted reflection takes on a new dimension, bringing up the historic painting discourse of abstraction vs. realism. These compositions create an object-ground relationship similar to animal mimicry, where the trailer hides in its surroundings by through reflection. The metallic surface becomes an arena for hallucinatory paint forms that given the degree of reflective distortion, slip away from recognizability.
hide..