The Complete Artist/ Artist's World/Artists' Dogs 1998 - 2002
The Complete Artist examined the history of the image of the Artist, appropriating self-portraits for their embodiment of certain stereotypes: the artist as angry, serious, bitter, modest, juvenile etc. In my research I couldn’t find any images of women artists that I identified with, and was trying to come to terms with that.
Another series, Artist's World, tried to envision the Artist of the future, using historical depictions of children whose genders, although implied by their clothing, could be interchangeable. My selection of images was based on a certain agency I thought I saw in the original paintings; I was looking for the new protagonists.
Artists' Dogs was a subset of Artists' World. I excerpted dogs from the history of painting. Imagining their owners to be artists, I saw the dogs as empathetically projecting a range of their owner's emotions.
