Jeff Musser, A Schism In The Sisterhood, 2022

Materials: Oil and pencil on paper

Artist Statement: Before a painting becomes a painting, I use my own photographs, my own drawings, and other source material to form a collage. For me, the value of making collages comes from stitching together photos as a kind of fabric, extracting information and then providing that cumulative information as a totally different package in the form of a painting. This mode of working took on a special relevance for me when I started to examine my own identity within the construct of race as an American living overseas in China from 2014-2016.

Artist Bio: My first job after graduating from The School Of The Art Institute Of Chicago was designing Happy Meals for a now defunct ad agency in Chicago. The job paid well, but I was artistically miserable. I learned very quickly that I could not be creative for someone else during the day and keep my painting practice going at night. Something had to give. When the rumor of layoffs within the agency started to circulate, I greeted the gossip with hope. When the layoffs became reality, I was suddenly free to pursue my love of painting. On the downside I now had to deal with issues of surviving, and how to overcome the much-romanticized notion of a starving artist. My painting style has changed dramatically over the years, but my love for portraiture and narrative figurative painting has always been at the heart of my practice.