THOUGHTS

This is an examination of the construction and performance of identity and gender; an exploration of the costumes we put on every day to serve as armor, projection, mirage. Portraits are created from a photo of my body in costume and taken with a cell phone, reflecting the relationship between a physical form and conceptual or virtual projections of selfhood. I find myself drawn to loud prints and colors, embracing the irony of their flashiness or tackiness on humans against life-saving camouflage in the wild. The complex layering of identity deeply fascinates me, often focusing on the complicated experience of being a human heavily socialized as a woman. Femininity is redefined, severed from patriarchal discourse, and refuses to conform to a binary view of identity. I seek a third Other, a monstrous feminine.

Paintings spring from a dialogue with the past and present, internal and external influences, a healthy dose of mythology, and the struggle to form a cohesive sense of self. Questioning the costuming linked to our daily performances paired with the political nature of clothing, color, and fashion all directly stem from a desire for a more fluid and equitable future. The work is emboldened while I fight the urge to hide, trying not to lose myself completely.

May 2026

Listen: you are not yourself, you are crowds of others, you are as leaky a vessel as was ever made,

you have spent vast amounts of your life as someone else, as people who died long ago, as people who never lived,

as strangers you never met. The usual I we are given has all the tidy containment of the kind of character

the realist novel specializes in and none of the porousness of our every waking moment, the loose threads,

the strange dreams, the forgettings and misrememberings, the portions of a life lived through others’ stories,

the incoherence and inconsistency, the pantheon of dei ex machina and the companionability of ghosts.

There are other ways of telling.

- Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby