Flux

Through painting, I seek to invite the viewer into a particular state of mind. Drawing from my adoration of filmmaking and storytelling, I create compositions with an inherent narrative quality—paintings that resemble frames from low-budget indie flicks. The audience is dropped into the middle of a story where characters talk to their mother on the phone, file their nails a little too short, floss their gums bloody.

The figures are looking back at the viewer, which doesn’t allow for the audience to gain authority over the women depicted. Since the age of ten I have been obsessed with the idea of breaking the fourth wall, to shatter the glass pane of reality and invite the audience into frame. By breaking the cinematic fourth wall, these women regain their autonomy and don't allow for the diminishing tendency of voyeurism to render them into a state of vulnerability. They are actively participating in the viewing of themselves; the women are in control; the viewer is not. These women are not innocent, but rather they are raw like a drunken spring-break sunburn, as honest as a dream, and both tranquil and violent as the whitecaps of rapids.

My goal is not for the audience to identify a particular narrative, but to walk away asking: what am I seeing, and consequently, why am I feeling this way? The compositions in these paintings may unsettle you, may relieve you of your own viewing, or bring you to a state of curiosity. Whatever the outcome is, that feeling is yours to take, to reflect on, and respond to within your life.

​

All Paintings are Acrylic on Birchwood