Byrna Flowers

My work in portraiture is interaction driven. I get to know my subjects by taking candid photos and studying their unique body language. Focusing on the person in mid- motion, I capture the raised eyebrows, crooked smiles, and waving hands that we all use to communicate. I sit with my subject and try to have intimate moments. This is a response to the deluge of Instagram and Facebook images currently flooding our daily lives.

My intention is to reinterpret fleeting imagery by creating a permanent object from an ephemeral image that we are accustomed to seeing swiped away by a finger. Tapping into the tradition of quilts and painted portraits as family heirlooms, I create contemporary portraits from these casual photographs that are snapped by cell phones, often live in the cloud, and usually disappear.