I am investigating issues surrounding the presupposed ideas of beauty, style, and glamour. My work focuses on the exterior properties of a subject as it perhaps masks inner turmoil. Costume, pose, and stance tend to identify a type rather than describe a person, and my portraits are of social products.

To put make-up on a child, and to turn him/her into an adult’s static conception of what childhood means, denies the authenticity of the nature of a child and is inherently artificial: the notion of wholesomeness is perverted by the manipulation and marketing of this artificial image. Society’s obsession with eternal youth manifests itself into the performing child. While pictures of posed 'stars' exude a vacuity which appear less than human, at the same time we have a sentimentality towards our pets - projecting human qualities on them.

I focus on the image and loss of identity in order to describe a kind of compelling yet disturbing beauty that I see. I magnify the visual and encourage my own technique to evoke a sense of history in relation to contemporary culture such as in traditional portraiture. By doing this, I am hoping to create a sense of timelessness in my work as the images I choose to work from fall into a continuum.
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