Face to Fayetteville

16×20" oil on canvas board

The intention for the work is to explore the ways in which people define, shape, edit, or inherit their identities both as individuals and as place-makers. We seem to share in this moment in time an obsession with controlling our personal brands, not getting canceled, achieving fame, virtue signaling, fitting in, standing out, etc. For many of us, our identities are shaped by our relationships. Some of us move fluidly between communities while others are immobile. Some are defined by a sense of place while others are happily disconnected.

What if you were to find yourself identified in a public work as part of something that perhaps you never fully understood or came face-to-face with before? How would that change the way you understand your own identity? How would that redefine your concept of the local community that you claim?

The work is intended to explore these themes through a series of 40 portraits. Each portrait depicts a resident of Fayetteville, North Carolina. The subject of each portrait represents a demographically, psychographically, and economically identifiable group of ~5,000 people within the 200,000+ residents of Fayetteville.