Creating a Lie

The images I took were of my daughter Monique, a sunny sky and the fabric from a pillow on my couch. The sun represents the first day of the rest of my life. The pillow I used to symbolize the creature comforts in my life. And it is no mystery to anyone what a child represents in this world. Children symbolize innocence and the future.

There are times in our lives when things are not quite as brilliant as the sun, as cute as a kid or as comfortable as a soft pillow. Sometimes life can be twisted, dark and of course unpredictable. Living our lives in relative peace and harmony makes us vulnerable by being lulled into a false sense of security. Having Monique veiled in a shroud or camouflage of sorts, helps to reinenforce the idea of a facade. The colors I wanted the sky to feel both light and dark, which is how life can be. Lastly I wanted to incorporate the suggestion of a broken frame to symbolize how often times things are presented in a picture perfect way, but in the end the fabrications and falsehoods can evaporate into thin air.

Alison Sweet critique of Artist Statement:
Bold statements are items that are crucial to the artist statement and explain what is going on
Italics mean they should be deleted entirely
Normal text is text that may or may not need to be deleted but should maybe be re-written or re-thought.

The image above is my interpretation of creating a lie. Sometimes people, places and things appear to be one thing and turn out to be something less than what was advertised. We see it everyday in all walks of life. Politicians are notorious for misrepresenting themselves. Commercials and marketing strategies tend to be contrived to deceive rather than being honest and straight forward. And who could forget attorneys, the best of which are masters at distorting the truth in such a clever fashion, that technically you cannot prove that they are lying. As we all know, lies can be used in positive ways as well i.e.., a white lie or lying to protect someone.

In a similar fashion I wanted my image to be visually impressive and by using various elements, provide viewers with subtle hints about the overall meaning of the composition. Clearly the image above is a distortion of reality, hence a lie,  but the elements of the image are real and have meaning. The images I took were of my daughter Monique, a sunny sky and the fabric from a pillow on my couch. Simply put, the sun represents the first day of the rest of my life. The pillow I used because I wanted to introduce a fabric as an element that symbolizes the creature comforts in my life. And it is no mystery to anyone what a child represents in this world. Children symbolize innocence and the future.

Most of us realize there are times in our lives when things are not quite as brilliant as the sun, as cute as a kid or as comfortable as a soft pillow. Sometimes life can be twisted, dark and of course unpredictable. Living our lives in relative peace and harmony makes us vulnerable by being lulled into a false sense of security. Having Monique veiled in a shroud or camouflage of sorts and distorting it's symmetry helps to reinenforce the idea of a facade. The colors I experimented with quite a bit, in order to give the sky a feel of both light and dark, which is how life can be. Lastly I wanted to incorporate the suggestion of a broken frame to symbolize how often times things are presented in a picture perfect way, but in the end the fabrications and falsehoods can evaporate into thin air.