Tyler Sharpnack
My practice usually consists of large-scale paintings where
elements of “violent” mark-making collide with signature cartoon
characters. However, extroversions of appropriated imagery and
anxious, introverted gestures trace something deeply personally
and unnerving. I look for unpredictable moments between the
content we consume as kids, revealing the themes of barbarism
they contain. Though I borrow elements from children’s cartoons
that identify with the 1990s, the characters are thrown into a realm
seemingly absent of time, place, and reality. There is a violence
that occurs that I translate into my paintings. My intention is to
draw the viewer in to witness the aggressive nature of advertising
imagery in paintings of violent atmospheres. There is an irony
in the fact that most children grow up enjoying cartoons without
really understanding what they’re watching. Archetypes of human
behavior are embedded into the imagined personality, and in
turn, the viewer, the child, picks up these patterns of behavior
that ultimately inspires and shapes their character. These
fragmented moments are taught back to us and re inscribed in
real life.