I grew up in Los Angeles amid Hollywood billboards and cosmetic surgery. I also grew up with the nascent Internet and the outlet of virtual reality. My paintings address the dissonance between digital and material artifice and our search for the genuine. I decontextualize and recompose elements of our manufactured world—bleached hair, swimming pools, digital distortion, reproductions of classical statues—to negotiate the beauty and alienation they engender.

By manipulating images through collage and exposing areas of underpainting, I make the mechanics of the tools of production an evident part of the picture. This encourages the viewer to further acknowledge the artifice of images and to question the consensus that the “fake” must be measured against the authentic rather than appreciated as a category of its own.