Loehle, Paul

Today, as throughout our history, human beings have faced a crisis unique to our species: self-aware­ness. We are burdened with the knowledge of our own existence as no other animal on the planet has ever been. We are confronted daily with the fact that we are alive, that someday we will die, and therefore everything we do in between matters. The notions of past, present, future, and identity matter far more to us than they do to a dog, an ant, or an elephant. Humans are animals that strive constantly to transcend its status as an animal, to live a life of

Meaning, to be something greater than we were born, and in a sense, to live forever. We seek an­swers to this daily, in forms such as religion, status, careers, families, material possessions, and person­al philosophies.

I am interested in depicting the human animal as it searches, fails, and succeeds in its attempts to be­come something immortal…and to escape its pri­mal nature. In working with full-color realism I use the concept of the portrait to glorify my subjects, immortalize the image, and bring a strong and often ironic sense of aesthetic beauty to the work. I feel that there is a strongly identifiable quality inherent in certain moments of brutal honesty…or dishonesty; and it is my goal to capture and bring these mo­ments to life in order to shed subtle amounts of light on disquieting truth.