My body contradicts pop aesthetics of beauty. It is difficult for women such as myself, who oppose gender conformity, to exist. This is especially true when one’s own body refuses to conform— when the physicality of the body itself contradicts existing gender and sexual conventions.

This work is a meditation on the space of creative activity. The paintings are a product of many hours, days, weeks spent shuffling around the studio, building canvases, reading the newspaper, getting drunk, rearranging old pieces, pacing, staring at walls, drinking too much coffee, and eventually painting. I’m interested in how traces of previous artistic efforts can evolve into new generations of work and potentially distill some meaning or truth from a studio practice that looks increasingly inward.

The American Dream idealizes home ownership as an identifying component of ascent to the middle class. But the maxim “There’s no place like home” illuminates the importance of home not as a symbol but as a feeling. My caravans reflect the notion that wherever you travel or move to, there is the possibility of finding the safety and comfort of home. The anti-aesthetic, somewhat crude characteristics of my paintings reflect specific experiences and identities of my family, which transcend time and location. From Akron, Ohio, to Los Angeles, California, dead or alive, we

I was born in Berkeley, California, and raised in Ohio and Florida.

Imagine, 1,600,000 years ago, a prehistoric character points. There, in the moistened soil, the hominid Homo habilis draws a line, inscribing the first mark. The core of my work meditates on this scene as the unknowable origin of image making. Combining scientific research with speculative development, my paintings investigate and challenge a concept of origin within human evolutionary history. I pull from a range of digital media to contrast prehistoric imagery with technologized colors, posing my hominid characters in flattened, stylized scenes. These scenes

My MFA thesis work, Reliquaries, is an ongoing series of handrendered photocopies. For this project, I mine flea markets, antique stores, eBay, and other sources for analogue snapshots that predate the introduction of digital cameras. The goal is to find anonymous images with unintentional effects such as photographic mistakes, film processing errors, or signs of damage/decay.

The thread that connects my paintings and works on paper is how they originate from a specific reference—such as a memory, photo, or words, yet are transformed by recollections, struggle, and the process of painting. Sometimes the pieces assert themselves quickly, but more often they go through a good amount of uncertainty. I don’t abandon them; I step back and wait until they reveal my next move.

My work takes the form of mixed-media paintings that reflect the dynamic interplay of materials and address cultural transmission across national boundaries. Visual composites of parlor interiors, Delftware, and depression and carnival glass are forged through material curiosity. Objects commonly found in domestic spaces are symbolic references to class aspiration, fusing ornament and heirloom into hybrid sites of desire. A mélange of narrative idioms underpins a diverse collection of poured skins, digitized images, textiles, and sculpted foam. A transnational vernacular is

How many times have I played soccer in my life? Seen my parents lying in bed on a Sunday morning? Played ping-pong during school recess? Partied with friends at someone’s country house? I paint an idea: the feeling of repeated experiences, which are always different in their own way, condensed into one image. Combining visual references from life and photographs, and using my imagination, I re-create my memories as they feel and look inside my head. My paintings can’t be placed in a particular day, month, or year of my life, nor can they be understood as a literal, recognizable moment.

My paintings are a collision of three worlds from which we gather visual information: the subconscious world, the human world, and the natural world. In my work, I arrange things from all three in a synthetic way. I layer, cover, crop, and paint, using a variety of materials, including paint, mesh fabrics, and photography. This playful disorientation creates a space where things that should be separate can come together in the present moment, blurring into a meshwork of chaotic intersections.