I create figurative oil paintings and drawings which combine classical technique with expressive contemporary energy. My art reflects my obsession with the body from head to toe and the emotional lives contained within us.
I draw with intense focus on expressive linework and poised movement, and paint with feverish attention to color, flesh, atmosphere.. Ideas appear as visions from a face, a conversation, my daydreams, a photo, fragments from a book or movie, melody or lyric.
Both drawings and paintings begin with loosely gestural underdrawings which evolve into detailed forms. I enjoy the process of discovery through each medium, approaching subjects spontaneously and imaginatively, remaining flexible in my vision for each work. To safeguard the natural world, my studio practice avoids the use of solvents, environmental pollutants, chemical preservatives, monocrops, and heavy metals including cadmium, cobalt and lead. My life and art are centered around environmental stewardship and resistance.
I started drawing as a non-verbal, sensory child surrounded by New York City’s vibrant cacophony. While fellow children drew families and houses under yellow suns, I drew animals fighting ferociously with fierce mythical creatures, then socializing like humans. As I grew, my art progressed to feral female-identified humans and ultimately to womanhood in all its life stages, ranging from mythologies to substantial realities of the flesh.
My interest in exploring the body began when I was a teenager, growing up female, queer and BiPOC in a sociopolitically charged climate and with a rare diagnosis involving invasive medical interventions. My fight to maintain bodily autonomy broadened to include other bodies as I became aware of the struggles of adults around me, popular media's treatment of women in both fiction and reality, and draconian impositions of mercurial “beauty” standards on one section of humanity.
These exposures fired my growing fascination with unruly bodies existing freely and defiantly while energetically taking center stage. I want viewers to feel deeply that each body deserves to be seen, to take up space, to have its stories witnessed and told.