Statement

Inspired by the symbolism, contradiction and pleasure embedded in the traditions of American folk art, Dutch floral painting of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the landscape paintings of the Hudson River School, I make paintings that depict an idealized view of nature and home. Through the careful construction of a desired view, I paint the world as I would like it to be. Rose-colored glasses are donned, outside disturbances are eliminated and beautiful vistas imagined. Reframing reality, I suggest my desire for and the impossibility of such conditions.

Chronicling the passage of time and the beauty of the landscape outside my studio window in the coastal New England neighborhood where I live, I unify the content of my work around the cycles of nature and domestic activity. My images speak to the poignancy of daily life and touch on themes of well-being and mortality, pleasure and loss. Carefully composing and layering on each painting in a way that consciously echoes the laborer gardening, embroidering, gathering and arranging, my images depict domestic scenes and ocean views. Placement is exacting. Paradise is frozen.

Pondering the meaning and presence of utopia in the everyday, I curate an idealized and intentionally artificial situation, suspending pleasure indefinitely only to find that even with rose-colored glasses on the desire for utopia is unsettling. There is always a sliver of a noticeable reality in the periphery beyond the edge of the glass.