I Want to Believe: Fragmentation, Instability, and Uncertainty

Abstract

This thesis traces the changes in my approach to image-making and speaks to the role of painting as a medium for inquiry rather than resolution. Through multiple bodies of work made over the past two years, I have asked questions about belief within the contemporary moment through perception, materiality, and the legibility of imagery.The paintings explore themes of the ineffable, locating the self, and the edges between states of being. The final works in this thesis raise ideas surrounding authenticity, digital mediation, and trust, asking the viewer to confront their own perceptual assumptions and the unstable boundaries of image, screen, and representation. Through painting, drawing, text, and collage, this current body of work opens a conversation around the shifting ground of belief. The paintings I have arrived at operate as moments in flux that mirror the fragmented, mediated, and unstable experience of the present moment and living life through the screen.