I try to make things that I would like to see. I want them to be original and simple and fun.

I’ve been obsessed for a long time with dichotomies and balance. My recent work is about pattern versus shape, how a rigid pattern can bump up against, and interact with, more organic forms. Pattern versus non-pattern, textures versus flatness, big shapes versus small ones, one thing helping to define the other.

Locality is important to me; I rely heavily on what’s around me for content and inspiration. I have spent most of my life living in varied communities in both the US and the global South, which has helped build my visual vocabulary. My collaged materials are sourced from locally made papers, dollar store finds, and teen magazines.

My current paintings explore gender and how our lives are constructed around expectations of it. I paint female subjects as a male version of themselves, and interview each woman about how her life would be different as a man. I am interested in this concept because there is a disconnect between male and female lived experience. Yet, somewhere in that middle ground, there is a place where we can better understand each other.

My work is concerned with disruption, calamity, and illogic. The paintings are not rational or sensible but try to make sense of events that don’t have a logical conclusion, cohesive narrative, or easy resolution. The result is often a feeling of inconclusiveness as things that are familiar and readily understood have been recontextualized into a series of incongruities and odd combinations. An emphasis on montage over narrative creates a string of conceptual confusions and a field of associations that relate to disjunction, discord, and disappearance.

I seek to examine the varied positions consumer technologies occupy in both our collective and individual perception. In particular, the way these familiar, often intimate, objects fundamentally change when they cease to function in the way in which they were intended. At this point, we no longer see through the objects into their use or potential, but just see them: their physical form, awkward and silent. Through a slow, laborious painting process from direct observation, I translate my engagement with these objects.

How sweet to be a cloud, floating in the blue.
—Incredible String Band

Paintings are bizarre spaces that work as both windows and objects, generating references and experiences. You cannot eat paintings and they aren’t fiscally responsible, but they embody the quirks of human psychology, including both the brilliance and ridiculousness of abstract thought. How many games of tic-tac-toe can be played? How many paintings can be made? It’s just semantics . . . and syntax. A lot comes out of nothing.

I explore the dark side of glamour and its allure, to both celebrate and critique popular culture’s myths about itself. Symbols drawn from fashion and youth culture are layered and patterned with personal illustrations in order to lure viewers into dizzying, colorful images. I often use the process of silkscreening to reveal both the breaks in the veneer and the complexity underneath. Through an interdisciplinary approach to personal memoir, I relay ongoing accounts of a melodramatic, queer mythology where glamour rises from the trash can.