Don't Rock the Boat

This painting is layered with inspiration from a variety of sources: excerpts from two of my father’s letters describing a scene from his youth at his mother’s bridge party and the importance his parents placed on conformity ; the expectations placed on me by previous generations of continuing family traditions and abiding social mores ; popular interior/exterior home and car colors from the 1940’s and the 1950’s. The use of myself as model rises from my need to paint from my own experience: a southern, white privileged experience. I do this to highlight the ways in which traditions, ideologies and privileged habits are so often passed from one generation to the next without question.