My work juxtaposes the historical connotations of painted portraiture with those of today’s digital images on social media. New tools such as the smart phone and online photo-sharing platforms encourage people to volunteer extreme versions of themselves for the world to see. The ready availability of the camera simultaneously numbs their sense of privacy and empowers them to author reality as they see it. My paintings addresses the unnerving ubiquity of subjective visual authors, the observeds’ surrender to the observers’ controls, and the precarious relationship of the information-age painter to his quotidian reality. I do not claim to represent Truth in my work, as I no longer believe in authenticity, but rather take pleasure in exploring the relationship of these images and what, if anything at all, constitutes our reality.