Artists Statement

I make figurative paintings that explore technology, my identity as a neurodivergent female, and unrealistic beauty standards created by social media. . Recently, computer work, zoom classrooms, and online friends have turned my life digital. Concepts like meta-verse, virtual places, and the development of artificial intelligence fascinate me. To my generation, our digital lives are worth more than physical experiences. The pandemic has forced me to embrace this virtual reality, and as an artist, I cannot ignore this phenomenon, but rather embrace it. To reference this digital realm, I use technologically advanced programs like Photoshop and Lightroom to manipulate photos of models, friends, and myself. Layering and altering colors remove the identity of the subject while using both traditional and synthetic pigments brings abstraction out of figuration. I research and extract compositional trends happening in art throughout the centuries, and appropriate the composition types while using digital tools and color theory to replicate a digital space in the real world.

Dyslexia fractures images and words I see. This perspective aids the design of my hybrid compositions. My paintings reference a glitch that reflects the imperfect nature of the body and the mind. My work simultaneously deals with processing and accepting my identity as well as appearance ideals due to media pressures and the personal drive for thinness and self-objectification I dealt with as an adolescent and young adult. I paint an idealized version of the female figure I have felt pressure to achieve by replicating the imagery I see on social media that leads to body image misperception and body dissatisfaction. The technical reorganization of the human environment and the human experience is a new, rich, and unnegotiable reality, full of troubling and promising potential. My work explores the fissures between the hopeful and concerning elements of this new relationship.

 Artists Bio

Hannah Purvis is a Texas-based artist living and working in Houston, Texas. She received her BFA with a concentration in Painting from Texas State University in 2021. Combining figurative elements with abstraction she uses Painting to explore a fractured identity. She is interested in themes that relate to our advancing technology that combines portraits and figure painting with influences of the digital. Hannah has exhibited her work throughout Texas and is currently preparing for a solo exhibition at Spellerberg Gallery in Lockhart Texas.