ROSSER
RIDDLE

ARTIST STATEMENT

The constant awareness that everything about your life is up for sale: your health, your shelter, your desire to live a peaceful life. Nothing is sacred. The feeling that your only value as a human being is as an economic unit for some boardroom a thousand miles away. That you’ll never be the type of person who doesn’t have to worry about minimum monthly payments; that you just need a little more air to keep treading water, but the surface keeps getting farther away. 

​

I’ve been in this water. But it’s not about me, or you, or anyone other than those already on the shore. In my paintings, my font is generic, impersonal, as common a sight as these signs in Capitalist America. On the road, we can ignore them, but the large scale of my paintings makes the absurdity of this reality unmissable. To compel the viewer to consider only the words of the painting and their significance, I abstain from personal touches. The bright primary colors with high contrast and hard edges capture our eyes and put a veneer on the signs’ true intentions.