I make funny paintings about history: that is the simple way of putting it. Within that statement, three key words deserve much elaboration – “funny,” “paintings,” and “history;” and the word “I” cannot help but be present throughout.
Working within and expanding upon the canon of history painting, I am interested in portraying the problem of historiography itself. History is an artificial construction that reflects actual events but can never fully convey its multiplicity and complexity. I started off with the question, “Why can’t I make up history too, just as do writers and historians?” I began painting eminent historical figures in mid-century modern settings as a comment on how the mind arbitrarily constructs images of history. I portray Roman emperors as a means of combining my two seemingly disparate interests – Classics and Art. By focusing on similarities and patterns in history, I point out that the world leaders making up the traditional iconography of history painting are no different from other people, and, thus, that their position in the social scale is arbitrary.
I rely on the recognizability of historical figures through my use of satire, the function of which is to use sarcasm for the purpose of deriding folly. This starting point led me to address complex issues related to perception and memory as they relate to historiography.