Welcome to the neighborhood

Includes bibliographical references (leaf 10)My graduate project Welcome to the Neighborhood is a series of oil paintings focusing on the issue of suburban sprawl , identifying it as a pervasive and expanding problem with dangerous environment and social repercussions. Most of my adolescence and young adult life was spent within the mundane confines of the Ventura County suburbs, where the infinite blue sky seemed as relentless and unforgiving as the sprawl around me. Many of the paintings juxtapose rendered elements from the natural landscape with the flat artificiality of suburbia, creating scenes that reflect its monotony, density, and sterility. Several other paintings draw attention to the current mortgage crisis as a particularly noxious byproduct of unrestrained sprawl. A few others depict subtle, yet banal features unique to the suburban landscape. Ultimately, through deliberate repetition of shapes and color, I present suburbia as a construct that stifles individuality and fosters depression, homogenization, and pacification