Statement

I create oil paintings with an affinity for square panels, beginning with a colored ground and drawing the composition in white pencil. From there, I paint the resulting shapes, layering color and pattern to evoke an ever-present energy that hums just beneath the surface. My compositions often center around an animal—rabbits, birds, deer, horses—surrounded by floral motifs that recall camouflage or wallpaper. The flowers adorn the animals, and the animals, in turn, eulogize the flowers in a quiet, symbiotic exchange. Where shapes overlap, I highlight their intersections. My work is frequently described as whimsical and surreal, with a palette ranging from vibrant to subdued, chosen intuitively and emotionally.

I forage through fragments of my life and past to catch glimpses of my own psyche. As a child, I was surrounded by stuffed animals, model horses, and my beloved cat, Stormy. I spent hours curled up in an oversized green chair, reading about the natural world and fiction featuring personified animals, such as Felix Salten’s Bambi. I drew animal characters, crafting stories from the sanctuary of my bedroom. Animals and nature offered me friendship, connection, and a deep sense of belonging. I felt safe. I felt true to myself.

My artistic practice responds to life’s profundities—love, loss, connection, and memory. The decline and passing of my father brought me face-to-face with mortality. In the midst of grief, I searched for ancestral ties, beauty, and a sense of both protection and being protected. I began revisiting the emotional terrain of my girlhood, foraging the past for comfort and emotional shelter.

I’m influenced by the natural world, lore, scientific illustrations, folk art, and personal artifacts that stir memory and emotional resonance. I’m drawn to the spaces where humans and other species share ancient, unseen bonds. Within a set of self-imposed, ever-evolving rules—colored grounds, white pencil, repeated forms—I’ve discovered a ritualized way of working that allows repetition to become a spell, a pattern, an intention. Patterns are interrupted, imperfect, and become the vessel through which we receive and interpret meaning. Recurring dreams, animal messengers, coincidences or synchronicities, natural phenomena, and totems translate into personal mythologies, iconographies, and belief systems.

The paintings act as disparate parts of a narrative—a story that never settles, always transforming, unfolding in unexpected ways. Rather than offering definitive answers, they raise questions. What is remembered, and what is imagined? What do we mourn, and what do we carry forward? These visual folktales, populated by the creatures of my childhood, reflect vulnerability, femininity, and a longing for refuge. The paintings have become my protectors—my talismans—each encapsulating a moment within an ethereal, shifting landscape where memory and imagination continually converse and are hauntingly familiar.