This series of paintings softly documents the domestic spaces and accumulated objects of estate sales. Built through watery layers, they shift between crisp realism and blurry abstraction, capturing my nebulous impressions of the people whose sales I have attended.
Estate sales have always fascinated me. In a single everything-must-go moment, I can observe the contents of a stranger’s entire domestic space. I photograph the sales I attend, witnessing objects accumulated over a lifetime and arranged by others, along with the chaotic hum of the sale itself.
As I paint, ideas of consumer culture, success expectations, and the pursuit of fulfillment puddle in my head, fed by culture’s push of products and lifestyle. The paintings gently and inadequately catalog environments imbued with the memory of a person I never met. This work reflects on the questions these sales raise: Can I fully perceive the recently deceased through the possessions they left behind? Or am I seeing an incomplete account of a life, arranged by strangers to maximize profit?