Water color on paper, 2018-ongoing

In 1996 I created a series of traditional oil paintings referencing media portrayals of people utilizing the first wave of virtual reality technologies. In 2018 I started a new series of smaller watercolor studies of people in the second wave of VR – most of the photographic reference for this ongoing body of work were taken by me at various VR festivals, events, university labs and such. I remain fascinated by our eager embrace and adaptation to current interface technologies – VR remains very awkward, expensive and ungainly to use. These paintings translate a digital moment into an analog artifact of this moment in time.

I’ve been colorblind my entire life. I was partially inspired to take on this new series of paintings due to the acquisition of color blind correcting glasses in 2017 – painting was always a challenge – these new glasses have literally opened up the world to me and have become, in a way, the mechanism towards connecting me to a new reality of color (wearing a different kind of headset if you will – my glasses)…