Untitled #353 2000

Cindy Sherman made this image, Untitled #353, and it is a photograph, but you know, it feels like painting! I look at the image, and I sympathize with Sherman and ask myself, what was she thinking when she made it? The material aspects of photography here really shape our experience of the artwork and the intellectual resonances of the work. Her face and pose feel awkward, vulnerable, and full of a heavy kind of sadness. And the paint, or rather make-up, is caked on thick. I mean that teal eyeshadow – it's a statement. Sherman, like a lot of painters, is in an ongoing conversation, an exchange of ideas across time, inspiring creativity. For me, as a painter, Sherman’s photograph is about embodied expression, embracing ambiguity and uncertainty, and opening up multiple readings.