The Works in "Materealtiy" extend concepts developed in a recent show "Prime Outlets", in which I portray people wearing clothing that they would wear to work or on days of personal or cultural significance. I have painted models dressed in outfits that they wore on birthday, weddings, as well as clothes chosen for holidays.

In a series of self-portraits I pose myself in paul smith, Volkswagen, nike, coca cola, and other brands, switching between a different pair and style of glasses. In each Work the subject’s face and upper torso fill out the frame, in the artless-seeming presentation of the mug shot. Which, then, is the self-portrait. These works ask — I mean, the "real" self-portrait, that iconographic image that, in the genre of portraiture is said to lurk within the portrait as self? The portrait, then, as a window into the self; the viewer's privileged view, then, depends upon the artistry and skill of the artist, who "renders" in the materials of his trade the effervescence, the quickly passing glance into the self.

My work is doing a take on the American self, dissolved into an assemblage of consumer identities. My portraiture aims to deconstructs the generally accepted notion of the portrait. I offer, or invite, then, a self-reflection of a different kind — a reflection into the meaning of the self, either as personal "subject" or as "subject" of the craft of painting. These portraits question identity, they do not find, confirm, or support it. In the self-portraits, as well as in the Angie make-up series, the commercial brand across the front of the subject undercuts the very notion of the modern single self- "just be yourself" proclaims the McDonalds ad; I work to exploit the emptiness of that slogan, as McDonalds, too, does likewise (Billions and billions served!).

Tim Doud 2007