Katie Humphries
My paintings represent an ongoing negotiation between image and medium, control and distortion. Reappropriating mass-media images of women drawn from fashion magazines and the Internet, I cultivate the imperfections inherent in the physicality of paint to create a psychological narrative that transcends the original source. This narrative relates to the imagined inner life of each subject, but also encompasses the power, vulnerability, and anxiety that can coexist in the overdetermined female form.
My work critically engages with the discourse surrounding depictions of women in contemporary society and the history of figurative art to create portraits that simultaneously invite voyeurism yet remain emotionally remote. The subjects inhabit an uncomfortable psychological limbo complicated by their awareness of being observed that implies a greater story beyond their poses and brings their subjectivity back into focus.
