Distortion twists and contorts something out of its familiar form and into an object that cannot exist in our world. Applying this idea to a portrait transforms it into a liminal space of layered reality. It relieves it from the typical visual indicators we rely on to determine reality from fantasy.

In my series Liminal I wanted to emphasize the idea of disconnection by presenting a barrier between the subject and viewer of the work. This barrier acts to obscure them from each other, almost like a filtered window. I pushed this idea further to complete abstraction, blurring the lines of portraiture and the study of form. My experience was embedded in the process that it took to create each of the paintings prior to the paintbrush. I enjoyed experimenting with editing software and learning how to use it to create these fantastical new compositions. I carefully cut out and multiplied limbs in seconds, dragged layer after layer of images to form new shapes, and so on. Each painting has its own unique effect – one might center on an intricate glass, warping the detail in the face, and another might be completely digital manipulation. Saturating and applying intense colors is also another common thread among the work. These colors act as another layer of distortion from the natural world.

I find through trying this range of techniques that the importance lies in how much I manipulate the original image. The ones I deemed ‘failures’ are the ones that do not almost cross the line of overworked. Those I chose to incorporate into my paintings have multiple layers of experimentation. I liked the idea that the original images are completely manipulated and transformed into their own small pieces of art before they ever take on the form of a painting. Each work in their uniqueness became a new challenge to figure out. The start of each of these works always came with the nervous excitement of figuring out the challenge, and the pit in my stomach growing as I did with the anticipated excitement for the next one.