Hollywood, 1979

I have titled the 3 main past life paintings with the location and date of death of each character , in the style of movie titles. In this painting Maya is reenacting the most recent previous life where she was a billboard painter in 1970s LA. A (somewhat historically accurate) billboard of Donna Summer is warped as we view it from an extreme angle. She will get caught in an unexpected storm and fall to her death, but right now she is just enjoying the view of the birds. The portrait of an actual celebrity is a reference to a previous season in my life where I had a career as a commercial illustrator, where I often was asked to do celebrity portraits for various magazines, books, and posters. I enjoyed this work and found meaning in it as it felt like I was making imagery that could help people (especially young South Asian, Black, Brown, and Asian women) see themselves in a positive way, but at the same time I felt a bit disillusioned by the obsession our culture has with fame. Another layer of this is the hierarchy that exists between artists who are “workers for hire” like billboard painters and illustrators, vs “fine artists” or those who get to have their work validated by galleries. I have always thought they both have different but important roles to play, and that the cultural impact, reach and relevance of the former categories of art workers may be underestimated by those high up in the art world who sometimes lose touch with the reality on the ground. It felt like an interesting thing to do to bring a depiction of one type of art world into another.