Like Cages Full of Birds, Their Houses Are Full of Deceit, 2009
Oil on canvas
27 x 36 inches

Brendan Lott: Pictures of the Vernacular

Brendan Lott's artistic production reflects the voice that our visually dominated culture actively generates and distributes through online file sharing. The subjects of his paintings are images culled from the cyber-debris that widespread use of digital photography has cultivated, yielding a surplus of amateur snapshots from which to choose and transform. Digital file sharing is a new form of community – one that is defined not by friendship or intimacy or even proximity but by the global exchange of anonymous information. This anonymity allows Lott to overcome the power relationship between artist and subject by removing himself from the process of “taking” the image himself – which results in portrayals of genuine intimacy.

Lott's found images often depict adolescent sexuality, deeply personal self-portraits and images of quotidian surrealism. These indelicate and highly psychological subject matter gains impact through Lott's titles, which reference popular music or the Bible and further elevate the images with associations as profane as they are loving.
It is not only the subject matter that explores contemporary customs, but the paintings' very production also reflects the world Lott lives in. He emails his images to China, where they are reproduced in a highly realistic oil on canvas style.  "These works began as an attempt to bring my practice in line with my life as a person living in 21st-century America -- wholly mediated, isolated, digital and decentralized and devoid of manual labor or craft," Lott says in his artist's statement. "I have no direct input into the development or manufacture of any product I consume, other than to consume it."

Lott’s process reflects the virtual seclusion of such physically isolating social networks in which relationships are founded not on knowing, but rather on the act of looking. Reflecting modern faith and dependency on the Internet, Lott's conceptual design tackles the visual relationships engendered by the proliferation of digital images. Critically editing the nearly infinite amount of digital imagery, his task rests in selecting and framing those particularly compelling images and then delivering them into the realm of fine art through a parallel practice of removed creation.