Becky Jane Rosen
Region: MFA Annual
We all have a desire to live on after we have gone. The snapshot
aids this ambition and allows for reflection on our lives, the
decisions we made, and how we evolved (or not) since the shutter
was released. I often work with my family’s film photographs
because they are a physical reminder of when they were made
and how they were shared. In the past, sharing a photo album
was an intimate and revealing act, whereas showing artwork is
always a public one, and making these paintings is both. I began
inserting my adult self into some paintings to depict a yearning
onlooker. This figure usually hovers in the foreground, observing
the others from a distance. The viewer identifies with this figure
because they are both withdrawn bystanders and have no access
to the family portrayed. This identification allows viewers to
empathize with the figure’s stirring estrangement. Altering and
painting images of my family simultaneously provides me access
to wistful feelings while evoking in my viewers the range of
emotions that intimate snapshots elicit.
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