The physiological and psychological makeup of cute are a central theme in my work. This exploration also acts as a metaphor for my current stance in the linear historical tradition of art history which has become as complicated and convoluted as any relationship a cute object has with its parallel in reality. Because the idea of cute is to manufacture an emotional response from its viewer, the logic one creating cute must follow is very specific to promote this desired effect.  What happens when these rules; of empathy, personification, and distortion are amplified or turned on to themselves?
  
        Currently I have recreated a series of stuffed animals sculptures called What You See Is What You Get or WYSIWYGS for short,  keeping these principles in mind.  To further animate their cultural inheritance loose portraits are created of them by mixing their visual qualities with their physiological ones in paint.  These portraits are then used to create psychological environments that they symbiotically exist in, which are then digitally photographed. Their own portraits, painted in the historical traditions of narrative abstraction and all of the ambiguity that this painting space can create becomes the  rational concrete space that they exist in.  The camera is an important tool in this slight of hand. Painting, photography art history and mass cute culture are all in blended together in a mysterious tension which promotes a new way to look. at it all, or rethink what you think you see.       What you see is what you get.