"The images in this series have all been taken from photographic documentation. Some are video stills from police “dashboard” cameras that have been released to the press, while others were taken by me at the scenes of a traffic stop and fire alarm. The important thing to realize is that these events actually happened. Photographic evidence is universally accepted as empirical proof in the face of doubt. A painting, on the other hand, is by nature a fiction. While a camera has many uses, there is no practical use for a painting. When it comes to truth, a painting can be an impression or an expression. It can be abstraction or representation. Painting has always been a form of lying, since Zeuxis and Parrhasius. To paint a photograph is the most unreasonable act in the world, but the precedent has been set with Photorealism. The crimes in these images are true events, but I have not set out to be a documentarian. I am attempting to strip away bias and propaganda in order to contemplate the bullheaded friction which occurs between human desperation and those direct enforcers of Modern idealism, the police. The effect is a cognitive journey, or a Digression, with no judgment and no point. A fractal cognition where there is no core to its infinite sphere. These paintings are as unreasonable as the crimes they portray. They are a deviation from reason and aesthetics - any actualization from which is entirely incidental." (c) Richard Legendre 2013
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