Biography and Personal Statement
Victor Sparrow
(b. 1967, Boston, Massachusetts)

Having grown up in Washington, D.C., a city of museums and monuments, I consider myself a painter in the strongest sense of the term.

I use images to tell stories. Despite the fact that my work — photographs, paintings, collages, assemblages and screenwriting — span a range of media. I consider what I do a kind of postmodern 'history painting'.

I am interested in collapsing the boundaries between high and low, the personal and the political, the antediluvian and the contemporary.

I am interested in the power of images and in making art about ideas -- not just a tribute to Greenbergian notions.  While I don't consider myself a conservator of Western culture, I am interested in exploring notions of Genre Painting – the Still-Life, the Figure, the Landscape and the History Painting –rather than whatever PoMo, AbEx or 'conceptual' art is current at the moment.

Visual Art should tell stories. Over the past 40 or 50 years, DC has been both a leader and remedial with regard to Arts patronage. As a capital city, I don’t see why DC shouldn’t compete with London, Paris, Berlin, Vancouver and Tokyo as cultural centers.

Last modified: January 22 2012