I paint the body as a site of uncertainty. With oil paint on stretched canvas and paneI, I depict images of bodily disarray or interruption. I am invested in the specificity of observed material reality, and paint the body with reverence. But I paint in a palette that undermines the literal through queasy greens and reds of rawness or illness. Themes of swapping, probing, and the fallibility of embodiment play out between the figures and within the surface of the paint.
Painted at a life-size scale, my figures evoke a nonchalant clumsiness that insinuates the viewer into a mirrored relation. Depictions of yawns probe the limits of the empathetic potential of looking and bring focus to the void spaces of the body. Thresholds of inside and outside are met with ambient transgression. Figures dissolve or merge, displaying ambivalence toward the calcification of recognition.
Costumes, pranks, double meanings, and incidental resemblances further test the trustworthiness of perception. Feelings of embarrassment, stupidity, or failure cut the levity of humor and suspend affective resolution. Perceptual shifts destabilize the familiar, inviting doubt. My paintings inhabit the realm of the not quite–be that right, resolved, or recognizable.