“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals themselves.”
In my ongoing project Muse, I examine myth-making and identity creation as a response to trauma, as filtered through the traditional practice of Graphic Portraiture(mediated through technology). In 2013, I teamed with figure modeling app Sktchy to serve as a digital muse to a diverse community of artists from around the world. At present count, there have been over three thousand distinct works created. I feel that by examining the methodology and cultural signifiers that appear within an artistic interpretation, we can more fully parse the ideas behind constructed identity, personal myth making, and the transformation of intimacy within our social media saturated world. I've since also branched into live figure modeling through the Academy of Art University in San Francisco as well as organizing live figure drawing events (If interested in hiring me as a figure model or organizing a figure drawing event, click here)
In 2017 I was nominated "Muse of the Year" by the Sktchy community, and was asked to create a series giving tips on how to create distinctive "selfies" for use within the figure modeling medium.
