"Inside Looking In" is a series that I've been gathering images together for years without knowing how they would all come together. It wasn't until I was in a thrift store looking through old picture frames and found a collection of very old, assorted, chipped gold frames that I saw how these images could tell a story in a series of works rather than one large one. As I very rarely work on such a small scale, I didn't expect the challenge would be in how the pieces became hyper focused on the details contained in each one. Which chair, which vase of flowers, which chandelier or ceiling all mattered immensely as that was the majority of the piece. The central figure, despite their drastic difference to their surroundings, became (as I had hoped) almost lost in the gaudy luxury around them.

 

The inspiration behind this series is like many dealing with the socioeconomic gap between those that have the most and those that have the least, but from the opposite perspective that I usually work with. The view of each piece is from the inside of luxury - surrounded by gold, wealth, expensive furnishings, and beautiful "stuff," looking out to the real world outside. The world where a majority of people have the bare necessities, if that, and the minute to minute emphasis is on survival rather than living luxuriously.