Date of Award

Spring 3-12-2013

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

Art

First Advisor

Rachel Lachowicz

Second Advisor

John Millei

Third Advisor

Michael Reafsnyder

Rights Information

© 2013 Stephanie C. Meredith

Abstract

My paintings begin with an examination of photography’s authority; practically the ubiquitous family snapshot’s power over memory and the development of our constructed identity. The amateur photographer’s desire for a pleasantly scripted narrative can easily misrepresent the reality of a moment. Because of this, I see family photo albums as mythological artifacts: they arise out of reality but are incapable of fully reproducing it. By using my own family photographs as reference material I embrace this mythology, indulging myself in a fantasy of place, history and narrative. This interest in the mythology of my past is contradicted by my own fear of fetishized nostalgia and a desire to derail the narrative of my family snapshots. My own attraction and disenchantment with narrative is combined into a compromising gesture that intertwines abstraction and representation and tangles the relationship each painting has to time: speaking of the past, present and future simultaneously.

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