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Presented as Four Distinct but Related Series

(Click Any Image for a Larger View with Title and Dimensions.)

Series # 1, "Portraits in the Alcove"

Series # 2, "Congregration"

Series # 3, "Petroglyph"

Series # 4, "Grandpa Ceciel's State Fair Stage, The History of ROYAL SCAMS and CLEANING BATHROOMS"

Additional Images (Click Here)

Work Statement:
Although the use of borrowed or “captured” imagery is key in the process of how I view and create, the physical, primal act of painting allows me to reinvent the experience I feel when looking and taking. I make it my own. In a way, I hope to undermine the preconceptions associated with any imagery and create it anew, while at the same time preserving some of the original “flavor” of the source material that fascinates me. The images that intrigue me come from a wide array of sources: advertising, archival photos, snapshots, wanted posters, yearbooks, corporate publications …etc. Conceptually, by focusing on portraiture, my work examines the human desire to both observe and be observed, but that inherent to any image (or interaction) there are always intimacies as well as secrets.

In the ongoing series, “Congregation”, I seek to explore issues, process-wise, involving the relationships between the captured and the created image by producing photographic impressions that are, in turn, reworked with more traditional mediums. Teasing an imagined reality from a found image is a progression that excites me. At times I feel as if I have the point of view of an audience member of some sort. At other times, however, I seem to flip my gaze towards the audience, as if I am on display. Mostly, though, I find myself somewhere in the middle of this dynamic.

In my recent work, I find myself less concerned with the relationship of the “captured vs. created”, as presented within the piece itself, but more in how these relationships inform me. In this approach, I view myself as an artist who uses the photo, or perhaps simply the idea of what a photograph is, as a departure point. I find myself interested in the history of the photograph, (who took it? why? in what context?) and, more importantly, the history of the person photographed, be that a history somehow implied in the original image or simply a history imagined by me. In the end, I endeavor to retain some intrinsic essence of the original image, add my own creative input and direction while leaving enough room for the viewer to come to his or her own conclusions as to what is really going on.

Visually, much of my work uses references to classical art, particularly Western/Byzantine religious iconography and modes of presentation. I am not poking fun at or trying to recontextualize the Art History involved. I simply enjoy and respect the aesthetic, the feeling it evokes in the viewer and the mood it sets up. I want to capture that aesthetic, strip it down and make it mine… empty it of it’s preconceived content and insert my own. I want to steal the visual emotional punch of the “historical reference” and plug in how I, personally, view the world; which is basically an interest in the absurd as a component of everyday life and a joy of the grotesque as well as the sublime.
Adam Myers

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