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I have always enjoyed "Dick and Jane" images as source material for my paintings. The children depicted in those illustrations are icons of an idealized Middle America that never really existed for most people. On one level the books are simply "readers" that help young people discover the english language through stories, yet they also represent an attempt by publishers to impart a sense of civic responsibility and secular morality via the simple concept of 'neighborliness.'
The paintings in this series explore the contradictions I associate with our (American) presence in the Middle East. The hapless Dick and Jane characters inhabit disastrous scenes taken from contemporary war photography. These narratives are further complicated by the intrusion of giant starbursts, stripes, bubbles, and other graphic elements. The central drama in these paintings concerns the naivete, arrogance and hubris that seem to telegraph straight from Eisenhower-era values to the way we find ourselves acting in the world today.
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