I am captivated by the narratives of people who settled the Western United States. As a child in Eastern Montana, I wandered the history-rich countryside looking for abandoned homesteads. At each site, I found fascinating evidence of difficult lives eked out on the Northern Plains. Today, this same curiosity motivates me as I mine for stories found in vintage, vernacular, photography and create paintings that make visible universal themes about unknown Americans. Friendship, community, pride, patriotism, and home are some of the themes that reveal the vast topography of our shared human experience.

These investigations inform the direction of my paintings. Each piece is constructed of appropriated images of discarded photographs from the early days of our country’s history. Utilizing formal structures of filmic image repeats and kaleidoscopic, Busby Berkeley tondos of images digitally stitched together I create works that not only celebrate the developing West, but also offer evidence simmering under the initial entry point of race, gender, sexual identity, socioeconomic position, and class. In a sense, I am a visual cultural anthropologist.

Color, imagery, and repetition work in unison to build a spirited pictorial dialogue. Depending on one’s proximity to a piece, the work can simultaneously function as abstraction (when far away) or realism (when near).

My intent is to create paintings that evoke a sense of place, document the passing of time, bring awareness to local histories, and invite the viewer to engage in a developing American identity.

(Text by Dana Hart-Stone)