Drawing and Imaging · Fall 2025

Criminal

Acrylic on masonite panel, 18 × 24 in.

The assignment was to paint a face with text covering it. I used my mugshot.

The word is CRIMINAL, printed large in red outline over a two-tone blue reduction of my arrest photo, taken on a night I got stopped for an open container in a college town with my friends. Not great at the time. Cleared and expunged since, and a pretty good story to tell at this point.

This isn't a confession. It's about the gap between a label and a person. From across the room, CRIMINAL reads as serious, maybe threatening. Get closer and realize it's me, and that dissolves. I don't identify with the label, even though it got officially applied to me once. The painting holds both things at once.

Compared to the other self-portraits I made this year, this one almost works as a non-self-portrait: it's ironic to put yourself under such a dramatic label.

Also this year