A Paper Fan for Ho Xuan Huong

In this series of oil paintings I’ve worked to bring about some of the psychological complexities of sexual relationships by depicting delicately rendered scenes marked by a variety of stances and physical embraces. Each scene has been subsequently overpainted with abstract compositions that relate to the chaotic and fractalinear characteristics found in nature. I’m drawn to imagery that might elicit a certain moral ambiguity, particularly in how we consider our interaction with images of one another, (erotic “selfies” for instance), and in how the act of looking implicates us in ways that are not always clear. Because there is a sexual component to the depicted figures, there can be the obvious overlooking of the imagery as a depiction of natural human activity or as an extension of nature itself, and I’m interested in how these forms and representations might be reexamined and reconstructed outside the common paradigms of pornography, advertising, or the objectification of male and female stereotypes.