Twice Bitten. (Detail) Oil on Canvas, 60 x 40 inches.
These images of criminals are taken, for the most part, from early Twentieth-Century news files: old clippings, found photos, occasionally the residue from picture morgue. These images are enlarged and colorized, often digitally aged, and then painted in oil on canvas. This body of work comprises villains and vixens, mobsters and crooks, sneaks and loiterers and cons. Their crimes tend to vary—yet their expressions seldom do.
Some of these people are stoic. Others are sad. Some shrug, while others primp and preen and pose. There is struggle here mixed with surrender, glimpses of resignation, regret. (Even despair.)
Maybe these expressions resonate because we can’t help but recognize these qualities in ourselves and in each other. And maybe that’s the point.