Paul Heaston

Artist Statement

In my figural paintings the viewer may recognize the clothes, the hairstyles, the ages and genders of the subjects and draw conclusions. The viewer may also identify emotionally with a subject’s posture or gaze. Yet any attempt to otherwise know the subject is confounded by a lack of location and narrative specificity. Overt expressive and gestural aspects of identity are unclear (if present at all), even though there is little cultural ambiguity. The seemingly “complete” presentation of a full standing figure is undermined by the absence of expected cues. Like Beckett’s Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot, the people I paint seem to wait eternally for an existential conclusion that will never appear.

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