While painting this series, I was thinking a lot about homemade tattoos. These tattoos are borne out of necessity by someone who is desperate to express themselves, and I think a lot about the scratchy tender aesthetics of this. Even the term “homemade tattoo,” such an unlikely word combination, struck a chord as well for some reason I can’t quite articulate. The process of tattooing consists of tiny dots making an image. Prior to this work, the tiny dots in my paintings were derived from images of embroidery and textiles. Both the tattoo and the embroidery reflect my life as a mother and an artist. My voice is influenced by my childhood home, how the table was set and what plants were grown. I am sure I have learned all my internal visual rules through my mom’s placement of knickknacks. For better or worse, I am doing the same to my children, imprinting my totalitarian aesthetics on them.