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Pundit of the First Impression
STATEMENT:
The prompt that yielded Pundit of the First Impression was to paint a portrait of a classmate that was simultaneously a self-portrait. In approaching this prompt, I was struck by how fragmented I perceived my identity to be in comparison to my classmates. So Pundit of the First Impression is a dramatized, tongue-in-cheek visualization of fragmented selfhood that I think is felt by most people, especially young people navigating cultures dominated by irony. The setting is bottomless and limitless (maybe reminiscent of the heavens or early 2000s conceptions of the inside of a computer) and is supposed to be fundamentally uncomfortable and destabilizing. While Pundit of the First Impression offers no answers, it challenges identity and physicality on equal terms. My hope is that the image elicits various narratives and can be felt as both a fixed painting and a dynamic, dramatic piece.
BIO: 
Tennessee-born artist Sam McCann has been practicing painting recreationally since middle school. More recently, she has taken on the medium more seriously, orienting her concentration at Gallatin around Studio Art in addition to Comedic Writing and Art History. Sam is interested in the moments when comedy and tragedy overlap and become indistinguishable, and her painting practices are heavily influenced by traditions of narrative and character that are features of Dramatic Writing. While her artistic ethos is still a work in progress, she is interested in playfully isolating comedic, well-intentioned moments in a void that viewers can interpret as heavenly, empty, or inconsequential.