The My Little Pony is a nostalgic object that has compelled me to tell real and imagined stories of my personal past, present, and future. I create hybrid characters and alter egos that are products of repressed desires and fantasies. Contemporary painting motifs and ideologies are juxtaposed with those from history to create elaborate and delicate play worlds that float, burst, and drip with flashy pop colors and candied sparkle.

When I paint, I open the door to a parallel universe built from my own memories, fantasies, and insecurities, and populated by figures that simultaneously reflect this world and exist apart from it. The strangeness of allowing personal narratives to interact freely with the primordial effects of shape and color can feel a bit like trying to improvise a song in iambic pentameter, at 180 beats per minute, while free falling. The formal demands of the activity alone leave little room for hesitation, and melodrama is often an enticing life raft (or parachute, to stick with the metaphor).

I approach each image as a series of associative layers. It may begin with a feeling, or a specific landscape, which I then build out from, into, or on top of with a series of structural or topographic interventions. I invite the viewer to enter the space, while simultaneously presenting obstructions, creating a tension that both repels and attracts. On closer inspection, the spaces reveal themselves to be essentially unconquerable arenas.

Love is transcendent, it disrupts the alienation that so often characterizes life. Desire can bring meaning and purpose, but experiencing it is not without risk. In these interactions, imagination can blur reality. I’m interested in the ways that adults play, the cathartic potential of romance and power exchange, and the emotional results of escapism.

Growing up as a Romanian Orthodox minister’s daughter provided me with the opportunity to experience daily life as a fascinating paradox, observing things in their ecclesiastical functions as well as prosaic roles. I consider the deep reverence for and flippant disposal of the same object by meticulously painting mundane artifacts and found detritus. Sifting these objects through my perception and the slow process of painting allows me to exploit and retain their material qualities on the canvas.

Instinctual repetitive actions of layering, cutting, and rolling the paint . . . this laborious process of working becomes hidden with each additional layer of material, obscuring the actions before it, allowing only subtle cues to be seen in the end: hints of color, gentle textures, subtle brushstrokes. I consciously determine the layout of each piece, a simplified look from afar and a complex design from up close. In the end, the goal is not about making a painting, sculpture, or installation the final object, but rather about subtly exposing the process.

The contemporary landscape is an integral point of investigation in my work, particularly the way political and economic shifts inform the way we use the landscape. Natural disasters, droughts, sources of water, metropolises, athletic structures, industry, policy, crisis, and community are deciding factors in how we use and change our contemporary landscape. None of these changes occur without consequence, but in the moment most seem necessary. My intent is to highlight the necessity as well as the negative results within the landscape by way of painted materials.

Respite is a series of ink paintings
that attend to the subtle fickleness of life and the ephemerality of its passing. I contrast mundane moments with my grandmother’s fight with lung cancer, a parting that interrupted the pace of life. Ultimately, Respite serves as a remembrance, a sequence of fragments that resist the natural and automatic process of forgetting.

I conceive of my paintings, videos, and installations as narrative displays that situate the viewer in a position of estrangement, perplexity, and curiosity in order to open space for subsequent moments of reflection and introspection. Through my work, I present gags, vignettes, or situations that portray everyday scenes infused with a surreal, tragicomic atmosphere.