Email the artist at:

svmcconville@gmail.com

EDUCATION

2007 . MFA , University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

2002 . BFA, Parsons School of Design, New York, NY

1999-2000 . Parsons School of Design, Paris, France

1995-1996 . AFS Czech Republic

Vintage 1950s girlie photographs and uncanny scenes from classic black and white films are sources that inform my work. I am drawn to transform derived female subjects, such as Marion in Hitchcock's "Psycho" and the minimally clad models from old "cheesecake" photographs, into painterly, cropped, and time-tinted narratives. I am engaged in altering these sources by involving some of the original formal elements, such as the dramatic lighting and blatant staged gestures, and bringing them into the pictorial plane. From this point I attempt to add emotive elements and distortion to the figure and the narrative. I am interested in the long-standing tradition of figurative painting and specifically in regurgitating and exploring the internal life and memories of my subjects that were the source of desire and projection. In conjunction to my practice, I have used for loose conceptual basis the essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," by Laura Mulvey, which explores the very relationship between viewer, the viewer's gaze, and the object of desire.