In the last half-century, a number of artists have chosen to abandon notions of good taste, skill, and aesthetics in the field of drawing in order to investigate and critique our social and cultural landscape. Two very different approaches have been taken to accomplish this – the use of humor, borrowing from the format of comics; and confessional art, in which the artist ostensibly lays themselves bare in order to act as a mirror for the viewer. In my senior thesis project, I explored these two forms of drawing in relation to my own life and identified institutional (within the Claremont Colleges) and larger cultural threads within my work.

This thesis explores the experience of telling and constructing truths and lies, and receiving and interpreting truths and lies within the context of contemporary culture. This thesis both augments and is founded in the production of the digital video In the Absence Of, itself an exploration of truth, self and identity.