I attended primary school in the early 90's and I remember how cool it looked to have our class portraits taken in front of a laser backdrop. These paintings are essentially backgrounds, any subject they might foreground is either implied or standing in the gallery with them. They were created using an mechanical airbrush system that I came up with. I wanted to embody some kind idealized late modernity that celebrated triumphant individuality and mechanized production equally. This tension, between subject and absence, human and machine informs most of my work.