Joseph Geary

I am interested in painting’s ability to access historical frames of beauty, and how portraiture has been used as a tool throughout history to convey the concept of idealization. I want to find ways to unsettle those traditions of representation and hopefully challenge enigmatic ideas of beauty and it’s opposite. Sexuality and desire are themes I’m interested in working with because of how they exist at an intersection between culture and the natural, animal world. The use of the male body in mediated imagery as well as contemporary portraiture has fed my work revealing the socially constructed nature of the body. I’m exploring how external forces such as the media shape people’s perceptions of their bodies and create a disconnect between ideas of self and identity.