Janet Werner’s work focuses on the invention of fictional characters based on found images from popular culture including models, celebrities, dolls and figurines. The paintings operate within and against the genre of portraiture, taking anonymous female figures and imbuing them with fictional personalities. For Werner, the process of painting is a way of investigating the iconic power of the image, invoking imagination, memory, and projection to invest the anonymous figures with human subjectivity and emotion. The final paintings are composite portraits that retain aspects of the original while also representing notions of transformation, innocence and loss. Janet Werner's Earthling will show at Parisian Laundry from March 29 until April 28.