Katelyn Ledford’s new paintings use trompe-l’oeil to turn illusion into performance. Rendering the backs of canvases with wood grain, tape, and painted phrases, she stages sincerity as something constructed and unstable. Meticulous craft meets dark humor as realism exposes its own artifice, echoing how identity is performed under constant scrutiny. The works hover between bravado and vulnerability, sincerity and collapse.
