Cynthia Daignault Inspirational Quotes (7)

I could name many women who travel or who work with America as a theme. I think it was more not being able to name canonical women, whose work is part of the American canon.

Now, at a moment when photography is so pervasive that it's been forced to grapple with its own identity and look inward, it feels like a natural moment for painting to look out, to reclaim that directive of picturing America.

We talk often about being in a media-saturated society, and we are surrounded by image streams. But it's nihilistic. There's a real randomness to all of it.

Depiction can override truth the same way that memory can override experience.

Artworks, whether fiction, music, or painting, because they have the power and possibility to become truth, when repeated enough or told enough are somehow truth about what America is, whether they were or not.

Painting is the chance to create a different space, or different way of picturing a literal stream of images.

There are many options for how images can aggregate not to nihilism, but to significance, or to meaning.