Gabriela Hernandez-Lepe

Artist Statement:

My oil paintings often examine digital photography and how it influences our memories and the concept of an appropriate presentation of the self. As photography has moved into the most intimate spaces we inhabit, my aim is to reflect how these images are then transformed -- softened, cooled, warmed or distorted by the camera and reabsorbed by the viewer as reality.

How does it distort and disproportionately emphasize fleeting activities and momentary emotions? How does it normalize or romanticize behaviors? I re-create these environments because I feel that the tangible nature of painting underlines the image's process of creating the illusion.

My most recent work has steered back into the realm of solitude; I often focus on those moments when the individual is alone, whether that is physically or psychologically. Those moments of heightened or removed self-consciousness often peel away the layers of illusion we've created. Alternatively, I sometimes literally represent the artificial, blurred, or unreal image that is the fiction we believe to be real.