Hybrids E-Isoptera Lightbulbae, 2002
Egg tempera on panel, 24 x 24"
Paul Paiement was born in 1966 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. After high school, he attended the Minneapolis College of Art and Design where he received his B.F.A. in 1992 with an emphasis on Drawing and Painting. He pursued his graduate studies at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, earning his M.F.A. in 1995. Paiement states that his work addresses technology’s influence on society in two primary ways. The first considers the fusion of the organic and inorganic through the concept of cyborgs or hybrids of machine and organism created to enhance nature, and the second regards Paiement’s choice to paint the subjects, rather than digitally render them to display distrust in our culture’s deification of technology. Paiement is currently a full-time tenured professor in the Art Department at Cypress College, in Orange County, California, and lives in Long Beach, California.