My work comes out of an intense investigation of my inner life. My paintings and drawings explore masculine identity issues, personal/dream symbology, family relationships, and life experiences. I often use self-portraiture as a starting point to create multi-figure scenes or symbolic portraits. I view the figure as a player/actor that can take on different roles through costume, age, gender, status, and facial expression—creating characters that symbolize my insecurities, fragmented beliefs about life, and ideas of personal identity. The canvas or paper is a backdrop where I recall events, ask questions, and sort through my experiences. Personal narrative is the driving force that motivates me to create work. Like connecting dots that form a larger picture, I discover what affected me, why it was so important, and how it has shaped me into who I am today.

Often I come into the studio with a specific theme in mind, such as a family portrait, or a contemporary religious barbeque. At other times, I begin by making random marks on the surface, “seeing” images in the marks—from which I begin to build figures and space. In every case, working intuitively is central to my process, and the painting or drawing undergoes a large amount of growth and change before completion. I add, erase, move, and rework—slowly building the painting or drawing one image at a time until the canvas or paper is filled and activated in interesting ways. This process is both challenging and exciting. I am often surprised at the compositional and conceptual connections I find in the process of weaving together disparate elements.

My current body of work can be read on two levels: On one hand, it is personal and self-reflective. The conscious act of remembering and giving time to unresolved experiences is both therapeutic and self-revealing. The finished work speaks its own language, understood only by me. On the other hand, I believe my paintings and drawings can be taken as an allegorical portrait of the psychological and spiritual condition of the contemporary mind. The over-accessibility of information and images in the digital age, the breakdown in the family structure, and the quickening pace of life are just a few of the subtle forces that have split our minds into factions and left us confused about who we are. A sense of personal identity apart from some kind of media icon or suggestion is hard to come by, and psychological wholeness/integrity is elusive. Instead we are filled with a cacophony of voices. By confronting the paradox of the contemporary psyche in myself, my paintings and drawings attempt to regain meaning and purpose in a relativistic, hyper-stimulated, and image-saturated culture.

David M. Hicks