Textual Poaching

Artist's Statement: 

I couldn’t really narrow down the part of myself I wanted to represent to a single trait like gender, race, age or religion, so I settled on a little bit of a combination.  I am a white, 18 year old, male Mormon, who is also shy.  I know we weren’t looking for personality traits really, but those parts of my identity kind of add up to me being shy and that played an important part in the thought process that played into this piece of mine. 

            I searched for an old style portrait painting, because that’s the feel I wanted to go for and that’s how I feel people view me initially.  I’m pretty reserved, and there’s nothing outwardly special about me here in Provo, which is filled with young white male Mormons.  I feel quite plain sometimes, and wanted the portrait to sort of convey that.  I found the one I liked best and unfortunately it was a portrait of Mozart.  I am not comparing myself to Mozart, and one must admit, he looks a little weenie-ish in the painting.  I know that in context it makes sense, but in modern day it can be kinda’ funny.

            Anyway, the idea is that though people see me as a very plain, simple, even possibly uppity, and a little weenie-ish.  However, as shown in my poaching, there’s another side to me that is unexpected by most.  I’m goofy, and definitely a little crazy, or at least can be.  That is my own interpretation of my work, however if someone was hung up on the portrait being Mozart, I guess you could say that one side of me is ambitious and profound (not really) while the other is a bit silly (much more likely). 

            In all seriousness, my main goal was to take an image that was very proper and alter one side of it to look fun and silly because I feel those are the two sides of me despite the fact that my white, male, Mormonness often makes people only see the former.  
When I read the reading for this week I was pretty sure I was going to end up using something from Star Wars or some other media franchise I like because it talked about things becoming real when they're loved.  I agree with everything the article said, and making those things your own in a way, but I had no real knowledge of this piece before I textually poached it to be honest.  
 An influence I had was the work of Fernando Botero, an artist who repaints famous paintings, except the subjects in his versions are really fat.  His most famous is the fat Mona Lisa.  He has his statements and reasons, but one element to me is that it really is pretty funny and silly.  It makes you think hard about a famous piece of art in a new way, and I kind of aimed to do that.