STATEMENT OF WORK

I primarily paint lone women in domestic environments in an effort to express my ideas about human isolation and vulnerability in our modern world.  I work from photographs that I stage and shoot myself, and some elements, such as wallpaper or an intricately patterned garment, are painted from life. To give the image a charge of disturbance the viewpoint is often that of an outsider looking in, throwing the viewer into the position of voyeur.  I’ve always been interested in portraiture and narrative threads as a means of exploring how fragile we are despite the ways we buffer ourselves from the outside world -- with soft quilts, richly patterned wallpaper, or by leaving a light on at night while we sleep.  My more recent work adds to this theme, an exploration of the world below the canopy - where we are tiny in our universe, surrounded by an otherworldly landscape.  Curtains of whispering green leaves create an ominous gateway, fireworks sparkle in the night as if to cast a spell, and suburban nightscapes show cozy houses lit like jewels against the darkness surrounding them.  The figures in this body of work, exist indoors, where nature creeps in through patterns and at the edges -- a palm leaf motif on a skirt, darkening woods outside of a window, and hulking houseplants.  Alone, the women dive into other worlds through music, a letter, a laptop, buoyed by patterns and bathed in soft light.  The delicate constructed spaces they inhabit below the treetops are fragile bubbles – they are both beautiful and terribly alone.