My latest series of paintings, ‘Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms’, is a further step in my examination of consumer culture. My past work has looked at fast food and car advertising but this show tackles the most controversial consumer products available over the counter: guns, cigarettes, and liquor. In previous exhibitions I have examined the gap between fantasy and reality found in the modern advertising landscape. In ‘Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms’ I am examining products that exhibit not just a gap but a vast gulf of dissonance.

           Alcohol, tobacco and firearms loom large at the center of popular culture. We consume TV shows, movies, and video games where guns entertain us as blazing dramatic elements but in reality they deliver only suffering. Drinking is a social ritual with a Jekyll and Hyde streak while smoking personifies cool while it preys on our bodies by stealth. All three of these items are legal, advertised products. They are so hazardous that the US government has a law-enforcement agency dedicated to their oversight called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

            This series will be smaller in scale than previous works with the largest piece being only six by four feet. This more intimate scale will address the symbiotic relationship between person and insidious products. I will compose these images to emulate advertisements by using layouts and logos one would see on billboards or in magazines. In doing this I hope to emphasize the unsettling idea that these products are marketed in the same was as Big Macs and BMW's. Also included is a print edition of three silkscreened images to augment the oil paintings. The multiple nature of printmaking will bring my work closer to being mass produced items themselves.

            Alcohol, tobacco and firearms have become fetishes in our modern pop-cultural mind. Despite continued efforts to limit their damage, they continue to undermine our health and happiness. We love James Bond and his dedication to the vodka martini, the Turkish cigarette and the Walther 9mm pistol but he inhabits only a fictional universe. We are left to live in the real one where guns, cigarettes and alcohol kill. While researching this series I found a t-shirt that reads: “The ATF Should be a Convenience Store, Not a Government Agency.” This perfectly sums up the contradictions of American pop-culture in the Twenty-First century and it also defines a topic I find irresistible for this exciting new series.