Colleen

(2022-23)

Colleen I, Oil on Canvas, 14″ x 11", 2022
Colleen I, Oil on Canvas, 14″ x 11″, 2022
Colleen II, Oil on Canvas, 14″ x 11", 2022
Colleen II, Oil on Canvas, 14″ x 11″, 2022
Colleen III, Oil on Canvas, 14″ x 11", 2022
Colleen III, Oil on Canvas, 14″ x 11″, 2022
Colleen IV, Oil on Canvas, 14″ x 11", 2022
Colleen IV, Oil on Canvas, 14″ x 11″, 2022
Colleen V, Oil on Canvas, 11″ x 14", 2023
Colleen V, Oil on Canvas, 11″ x 14″, 2023
Colleen Installation View
Installation View – Concordia University

Is authenticity possible in the digital age? How does accelerating self-documentation and promotion online shift our self-understanding? These are some of the questions I asked myself when painting “Colleen”. Based on an instagram filter donned by an actor-friend to create a recurring character, I challenged myself to paint a face that simultaneously felt real and mask-like, seductive and unsettling. Rife with emotion yet unnaturally distorted, her eyes pleading yet distant, the face becomes both a point of entry and a tool of denial. Her identity remains in a state of excess, detained somewhere between dissolution and becoming.