This body of work comes from the child still within and my love of the classic board game CLUE. It started off as a six piece series of paintings that evolved into much more. I contemplated between a plethora of my own ideas and others’ suggestions for this series. These ideas became reality with the results being a modernized version of the CLUE character cards. I find it ironic that as young children we play a game based on a “he said, she said” murder mystery. This concept hardly seems appropriate for children. With this in mind, I decided to add sex appeal to the characters and make them my own. I have given Mr. Green, Ms. Scarlett and the rest of the suspects a gateway into the twenty-first century, creating an “adult version” of this already mature game. My love of the game and excitement over my character paintings encouraged me to bring these new modern day players to life through photography.

In both my painting and photography I pay great attention to detail. I wanted the paintings to have a sense of realism. I spent extra time to create the proper shadows and folds on the attire of each suspect. My goal was to give the paintings movement. As for the photographs, I wanted to have complete control over the images. I accomplished this through controlled settings, staged lighting, location, props and models. Lighting was a vital piece of this process. I used dramatic lighting to cast harsh shadowing to set the mood. With exaggeration of the models clothes and gestures, I created scenes of both suspense and lust. One of the concepts I love most about photography is being able to bring to life the visions that I create in my head; I was able to do just that with Scandal. If these photos have a mission, it is this: Life is like a board game, keep it fun, but choose your moves wisely…you never know who will stab you in the back…with the knife…in the kitchen.