Patterns echo and cycle throughout our lives, sometimes unnoticed but ever present. Aesthetically and conceptually these patterns of human behavior and life experience find their way into my paintings. These concerns may touch on issues of class and gender, social/emotional dynamics, celebrations, failures or milestones. How do we mark and acknowledge them? How do we process generational trauma, grief or triumph? The paradox and coexistence of seemingly opposite experiences (such as grief and celebration) are often the foundation of my artistic practice and process.

Equally important is the consideration of the systematic marginalization of the feminine - feminine gesture, feminine aesthetic, vulnerability, compassion, emotion. What about the women in art history or in history writ large? Some names are known - Ana Mendieta, Zelda Fitzgerald, Henrietta Lacks, Sylvia Plath, Hilma af Klint. Their contributions were significant but their lives were marked by struggle, erasure or exploitation. These women represent both the brilliance and burden of the feminine experience – creativity, emotion and vulnerability were often overlooked, dismissed, or oppressed. But most are women whose names we will never know. They were excluded from history altogether simply because they lacked power, status or recognition.

The exploration of the feminine, especially those qualities that have been undervalued or suppressed, connects directly to my art practice. In my work, I seek to find ways of mark making that honor feminine gestures, aesthetics, and crafts that were often excluded from or diminished in the Eurocentric fine art canon. My work incorporates folk art influences, that came from decorative practices that were the beautiful and laborious creative acts of anonymous women (including my own mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother). The paintings nod to cake decorating, flower arranging, quilt making, textile pattern and surface design, object collections, and the aesthetics of domestic spaces. For me, these gestures are an inheritance, from women in my own lineage, who often lived less than glamorous lives. They brought light and beauty to the world in the practical ways that the social and economic boundaries of their time permitted.

The environments, vignettes, and tableaus I create are not literally of the world, though they do reference actual places or objects, most from my direct domestic surroundings. They are instead gestures and symbols, moments accumulated over time that have gained meaning in their assemblage. They mark time and cycles. They are a way of processing both the world we live in and our aspiration toward a better world, one in which all of us might see ourselves, reflected authentically and whole.