This Person Does Not Exist is an exploration into personal identity and personhood through the faces of people that do not exist. It started out as a series of portraits from a website that generates photorealistic images of people that do not exist (thispersondoesnotexist.com) and culminated in a portrait in oil paint with video projected onto it.

In European art history, a painted portrait typically represented a specific individual to express their identity and seek to bring out what they have in common with humanity. With the absence of an individual identity, could this painting still seek out some common ground with the rest of humanity?

Eventually while painting, I found I was projecting my internal feelings onto the subject. I was using his image to explore the sense of isolation I felt at this time in my life. The disingenuous smile on his face felt like the performance of myself I felt was necessary to navigate the world around me. I felt as though there was no true version of myself that existed, just as these images of people I was painting did not exist. I personified their struggle to exist as a way to explore my own.