Paint Palettes
If you have driven through the streets of most suburbs, you have seen the row houses of equivalent design, decoration, and setback. Such standardization seems depressing to you, but the important thing is that it seems even more depressing to the suburbanite. As a consequence, an enormous amount of effort has been spent by suburbanites to make their homes different from those on either side and across the street. The more identical things are, the more he seeks some distinctive touch to symbolize and validate any particular tract house as his house.
(Donaldson, Scott. The Suburban Myth. Columbia University Press, New York. 1969)

Paint Palettes further explores the notion of the decorative, by parodying ordinary household paint colours and their exotic, grandiose paint names. Each piece is presented as an oversize paint sampler, depicting 65 identical garage doors sporting a variety of paint shades. The differences between shades is subtle, and at times hardly noticeable, yet the paint names differ radically, intimating that garage door paint can reflect a great deal about the lives of the home owners. Paint Palettes thus suggests an irony: How is it possible for a person's sense of autonomy and place to be described through mock-classical imitations, pastiche, paint, or ornaments that are themselves mass-produced, heavily marketed substitutes for true artisan practices?

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