Matthew Palmer
I use paint­ing to depict the inter-woven rela­tion­ship between real­ity and media. Mod­ern cul­tures’ engage­ment with tech­nol­ogy allows one to blur the lines between fan­tasy and real­ity into an inter­change­able net­work. By using gen­eral fig­ures and manip­u­lated icons and sit­u­a­tions, I cre­ate an envi­ron­ment all its own. Embed­ded in both the desire for beauty and destruc­tion for what exists and what is cul­tur­ally con­structed. I employ a satir­i­cal, some­times tongue-in-cheek sar­casm in my paint­ings to cre­ate a play­ful cri­tique of soci­etal con­duct.
Using a clash of col­ors, styles and gen­er­a­tional ref­er­ences, my paint­ings dis­play ener­getic and explo­sive sit­u­a­tions. I com­bine meth­ods of real­ism, abstract expres­sion­ism, futur­ism and pop art into a sin­gle envi­ron­ment, cre­at­ing a ten­sion in the space of the paint­ing and the con­text of images.