At first glance at this image, the influence of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein may not be immediately apparent. Yet those two giants of Pop Art have shaped how I approach portraiture as much as any artists I have ever studied. Although, absent are the aesthetics of Andy’s silk screen-printing techniques and Lichtenstein’s reappropriation of comic strip dots, the closely framed compositions and exploding large areas of flat planes of bold color that both men utilized has helped form the very graphic visual vocabulary I often turn to for my portraits. In addition, the way both men often incorporate woman who were hard, crisp, and uniformly modish in appearance, makes it’s way into Falsely True as well. My painting may lack some of the mechanical and mass-produced aspects of their techniques, but I still want to give the impression that we’ve seen this amazing woman many times before. With mass media and popular culture constantly churning out the female identity as a plastic, consumable and expendable product; shifting back and forth between vulnerability and confidence, with a touch of superficiality, I choose to see her embody the beauty and strength of a feminine superhero still fighting for her purpose.