My painting explores the psychology of the individual. The characters engage in violent acts, while apathetic bystanders witness the macabre scene. Since childhood, I have faced the struggle between the private drama versus the public persona. My family escaped Poland when I was five years old. We all lived in a single room in Berlin. To blend in at a very prestigious private school, I learned to “put on a mask” and hide the embarrassing reality of my home life. Similar to a film director, I compose narratives to develop an uncanny dramatic scene.

 Isabelle McCormick employs traditional oil painting techniques and sculptural relief to render virtual space. At the intersection of technology and art history, she examines the relationship between self-surveillance and feminine archetypes that persist across the social media screenscape. Combining gold leaf, glitter, and Swarovski crystals with plaster casts and cake decorating techniques, she cultivates a tactile materiality that imitates self-branding.

 My paintings are positioned between an image and its double. In the same way that an illuminated object casts a shadow, a re-rendered image casts a semiotic shadow. My decision to work in monochrome speaks to the desire to depict the energy of these moving shadows. The drip, the blot, the smear, and the quotational nature of my images gesture toward abstract expressionism and the graphic novel. They acknowledge the hybrid nature of printed and digital imagery (specifically, television screens, advertising, and logos).

  My current series, Your Ass Sucks Buttermilk. I Herd It Through The Bovine. Feat. Big Dairy and Nestlé, explores issues concerning big dairy, capitalism, nutrition, and social awareness through a surrealist tradition. By integrating surrealist strategies, this work exposes contemporary social issues through dreamlike, strange, and satirical narratives.

 These works deal with a variety of subject matter—groups of people interacting in specific ways, our desire and ability to alter the greater landscape, and how me might be perceived by an intelligence that was unaware of us as individuals with desires, hopes, and fears.

 I cannot stand to watch sheets of paper run through printers, plotting ink. It is ink on paper. Call it a print but not a photograph. There is light in the decisive moment; however, there is no light in its nal conception. It is incomplete. I do not want to participate in such a process, so I paint.

I work with glass as it is remnant of my former photographic practice. Glass acts as a vehicle on which to make photographs, and it serves as their container, protecting the finished print.

 At a moment in which public education is highly contested, both threatened and threatening, we often see school furniture as a stand-in for student bodies. I make observational paintings in public schools, teachers unions, and other bureaucratic spaces. The corners of desks, floor tiles, papers, and chairs are the focus of my attention. The slippery, textural paint application that I use to depict hard surfaces alludes to the ways in which our idiosyncratic humanness can break through within the constraints of educational institutions.

  My work is about young adults. I try to find that arresting moment when they display vulnerability or inner strength, and authenticity is revealed. I look for the nuances in body language and physiognomy. My work engages with young adults by illustrating speci c gestures, introverted moments, and/or genre settings in a struggle to find their place in the world. I continue to investigate this subject and its validity through my compositions.

 By portraying a departure from or presence in nature, my images demonstrate my fundamental purpose: to offer breathable moments that are necessary for delivering immediacy, traces of processes, and natural reactions. The narrative initiates finding a space where one can feel rooted or catch a subtle glimpse of serenity amid the anxieties of experiencing compound feelings. The abstract landscape has a certain weight and intended perspective that conveys serenity and suffocation simultaneously. The various tones of

stephanie mei (玫) huang (黄丹妮) is an interdisciplinary artist. They use a diverse range of media and strategies, including film and video, installation, social interventions, sculpture, writing, and painting. They see slippery, chameleonic identity as a form of mimetic infiltration: a soft power reversal within hard architectures of power.