Carolyn Forrester
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Advice
2019
Oil, digital print, photograph, table leg on canvas
31.5 x 30 inches
Statement
I thematize the demands placed upon me, as an artist and as a subject, to perform a self: I distribute my resume, I insert biographical content into my work, I leave a trace of me, the artist, within the painting in the form of my picture. If these paintings have an ostensible subject, it is a felt one, the problems of deciding how to live and how to act and how to negotiate the various traps that lie in wait: if you can’t hang with the guys, what is your guise? I see these questions as running in parallel to the problem of being built and defined by metadata, of being traceable and construct-able through images, of having all your options proscribed and prescribed.
The paintings hesitate between different meanings because they are too neurotic to make a choice. They are involved in a constant negotiation with the viewer over their reading; the paintings open themselves up differently depending on the viewer’s angle of approach. They are aware of the response the viewer has to different types of paintings, and they will try to give you what you want. Sometimes my paintings are poor imitations of other types of paintings, as if to try them on for size. I am not interested in pictorial mastery; I am masquerading as a painter.
LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting (MFA) Students