Ruth Freeman

Region: MFA Annual

Website: http://ruthmfreeman.com

City / State: Brooklyn, NY

My work is meant to express a visual, abstracted awkwardness. A quirkiness that has haphazardly infiltrated our everyday visualization, discernible in everything from motion pictures and cartoons to our built environment. This awkwardness originates from an unrelenting need to achieve highly realistic imagery through digital mapping, lighting, and animation. Ironically, these motivations have created a strange new visual reality, one whose hyper-realistic nature leaves less room for the imagination. My paintings play on these ideas and glitches, utilizing the same physically obsessive processes to create perfection as in the digital functions we use on a daily basis. By emulating the computer through physical gesture, time simulation, and application of bright colors similar to those of backlit screens, I place myself in a strategic position to differentiate between the virtual and the real. The physical process acts as a guarantee of bodily presence in the paintings.