Christina Shook's work combines photographs and painting. She's had a long career as a professional photographer, her works spanning commercial photography, portraiture, documentary, journalism, and fine art photography.
For Shook, photographs are concrete, laden with detailed facts. Her works begin as her own photographs printed full frame without digital manipulation. They accurately represent light bouncing off of objects that existed in that moment. Paint, however, she finds to be a medium of infinite possibility. As Shook paints over the photographs the work takes on new meaning and complexity. The more that paint builds up and things get painted in and out of existence, the more the photograph begins to distort, and at some point collapses as a reference. The intertwining of the two mediums is an ongoing discovery and practice.
She also works in a conceptual style which grew from her graduate studies at San Francisco Art Institute. Beyond her paintings, her shows incorporate sound, projections and interactive pieces. These mediums all contribute to her exploration of the elusive concept of fact and how our human will contorts it.
