Right Clique

This series explores the world of elite high school girls.

My interest in this subject is highly personal: I attended an all-girls’ prep school in Los Angeles, and then later taught at a similar institution in Philadelphia’s Main Line suburbs. Both schools were filled with students very much like those depicted in these images. As something of an outsider in both settings, I was simultaneously drawn to and alienated from these girls. I found and find so much to admire in them: they are smart, accomplished, poised, and beautiful in a natural – and seemingly effortless – way. At the same time, there is something foreign and mysterious in the uncomplicated confidence they appear to bring to their lives.

The source material from which these paintings are drawn is snapshots posted by the girls themselves on photo-sharing websites; they therefore represent not just moments in the lives of these young women, but also those images of their lives that they have chosen to make available for public viewing.