Artist Statement

My paintings strive to unearth what lies beneath the surface and give form to sensation, contradiction, and becoming. They are depictions not only of myself and the physical reckoning of identity, but of all those who have been asked to contort themselves to survive.

Painting has been the central force in my life and career. Growing up in a large family immersed in photographs, home movies, and art history, I learned to understand life through pictures. From an early age I developed an awareness of the slippage between the personal and the archetypal as well as the sacred and the mundane. Autobiography has always been a critical component of my work, not as confession, but as a means of engaging broader questions of identity, embodiment, gender, and belonging. 

As a student at Oxford, I encountered Edvard Munch’s The Sick Child at the Tate. As a child who had struggled with illness, I recognized myself but also saw what was missing: a woman painting her own story. In my work I draw from family photographs, cultural imagery, and religious iconography, particularly maternal figures, to explore where private and collective experiences collide. My paintings explore how bodies are seen, regulated, fragmented, and reassembled while beauty, desire, rage, and resilience coexist within those processes.

Over time, my work has also evolved in response to both personal and cultural shifts. Throughout these changes, however, painting has remained my anchor. A disciplined daily practice through which I process experiences and arrive at meaning. Early explorations of archetypal femininity and narrative have evolved into more expansive investigations of cross-cultural identity and myth, blending both Eastern and Western visual traditions. In recent years, my work has been shaped by the traumatic end of life care I provided my parents. What was most profound was experiencing their rapid physical deterioration. The paintings that emerged from this period are rooted in loss but also in resilience. 

I am currently continuing to expand this body of work, synthesizing decades of inquiry into identity, beauty, and the human condition. My focus now is on raw honesty and embodiment, exploring the contradictions between memory and sensation in painted form. These paintings embrace the various techniques and unconventional materials that have long been part of my practice but pushed in new directions. Recent explorations include leaving underpainting passages exposed and infusing oil paint with marble dust to alter surface and texture. I also deploy a range of historical painting techniques within one canvas, leaving paint to exist in various states of rendering and gesture with the intent of a more open and dynamic mode of image making and storytelling.