Places, Please!

Growing up in the American South as the daughter of a scenic designer, I frequently found myself on both the physical stage of the theatre and the metaphorical stage of gender performance. Through immersive oil paintings, I seek to visually represent where these two experiences merge, depicting imagery and characters from my childhood staged in theatrical and uncanny environments. In this thesis I explore the canine motif as my primary subject, positioning the Dalmatian as a self-insert and exploring the show dog as a foil to the Southern beauty. Building upon Judith Butlers theory of gender performance, and Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze, I position the application of paint as a parallel to women’s altering of personal appearance and self-surveillance. I harness the beauty and tactility in both my paintings’ imagery and the medium of oil paint to direct the viewer inward, intimating complicity. In my large-scale paintings, I employ the visual interruption of the stage curtain and the spotlight as painted tactics of the Brechtian alienation effect, to distance viewers from the immersive qualities of an oil painting and remind them to engage with the aestheticized imagery critically. Through Sigmund Freud’s concept of the uncanny, and Jean Baudrillard’s idea of the simulacrum, I question how the constructed nature of a stage set or staged scene can reflect our constructed culture. Ultimately, my work examines the antithetical nature of girlhood and asks the viewer to consider whether there can be room for both celebration and critique of femininity.