Photos and the Lies they Tell - LINDA GRIGGS

My subject matter is based on family photographs, whether they be my own, my friends' or those I've taken from the dumpster behind the Photomat in Richmond, VA. For me there is a common feeling in them all: the American dream and it's reality, the isolation of the suburbs and meaninglessness of a consumer existence.

The spontaneity of the moment that these photos capture is snapped by a camera and forgotten unless found in the back of drawer or in an old album. The photos are a cheap, disposable commodities and the memories seem also to be disposable and discarded. But by spending weeks meticulously painting these images I make them precious. I am commemorating and solemnizing these discarded moments.

In posed photos I examine the tensions that lay under the surface of the smiling family members.

Although the paintings may seem to be direct copies of photos, they are not. I make visual reference to photographic light and space to reinforce the credibility of the image, but all aspects of the photographic image are manipulated and edited through the painting process to bring the viewer to my understanding of our shared homogeneous American past.

I work on a small scale because I feel the private experience of standing intimately with a small painting can be as intense than the shared experience of standing with the public in front of a monumental painting.