Available Work
My painting practice is fundamentally an exploration of surface through pattern, color, and texture. I have a magpie-like attraction to bright, colorful, decorated objects, but an orderly mind, a love for the grid and a strong schooling (from my architectural design studies) to mistrust the superficial. These contradictory urges come together in my paintings. I work in many layers of acrylic media, starting with a repeating fabric design at the base and adding elements both rigid and planned (geometric stencil repeats) and loose and unplanned (drips, washes, crackled layers).
Click on an image for more information about the piece. If you’d like to see past works, please take a look at my Sold Work page.
Attraction
In these works, I build up layers of paint and medium, starting with a piece of fabric and incorporating repeating patterns that are both timeless and reminiscent of a particular time and place. Among the many elements I bring together in a piece, I often use designs borrowed from vintage wallpaper. With these patterns, I induce a sense of sentimentality for things we may see every day without noticing, but which feel like “home”. Many of these patterns are considered “feminine”, associated with the decorative sphere, and thus disregarded, in the same way that women’s work is often historically undervalued.
I add layers of raised rigid geometric repeats, which I create using thick acrylic medium pushed through stencils. These contrast with the more purely decorative surface designs. While working on several paintings at once, I build up many layers on each piece over weeks. Each layer may involve multiple techniques, including drips, swipes and crackled textures.
These abstract works are coming from a place of honoring the domestic and the everyday, while examining the complicated feelings one can have about home. They celebrate surface and depth, inspired by a fascination with the decorative elements we are surrounded with in our daily lives at home. They are designed to evoke nostalgia, coupled with the realization that you can never go back to the way things were.
