To reason with the limited visual glossary of beauty and health paragons often conflicts with the grotesque absurdities of the body. This work is a response to this paradox and a confrontation of the space we take up when trying to take up as little space as possible.

I examine the role of the image as both language and matter. In an attempt to regain agency from the juggernaut of commercial culture, I put the found stock photograph through digital disembodiment. In doing so, I am forced to confront materiality on the screen and establish a set of filters through which I distort the language of the image. The disembodied image equips me with a new vocabulary to unpack on the canvas. Informed by the lived paradoxes of the body in space, I exploit the dichotomy of the carnality of oil paint and the optical contradictions of flat layers. This work untangles experiences of disidentification, consumption, the uncanny, and the grotesque.