denied realities

Denied Realities is about the expectations that are placed on us as women to be pleasant, complacent and obedient--the expectations that destroy a possibility for a full range of emotions, and encourages us to settle for less than the full respect required to feel human. Each painting starts as a clear wall, barrier, like the glass ceiling pulled down in front of me as a canvas. I work up against that barrier. I scrape and squeegee marks and messages in gold, in reverse, from my perspective. I then cloud these marks and messages out with traditionally feminine, saccharine colors.

In a way, each piece in the series felt like an emotional storm manifested: atmospheric chaos that expresses stormy turbulence, but is perhaps too “pretty” to be taken seriously. I used to shy away from pink in paintings, because those colors were not revered by the “art world”; a world which I [now] see also as connected to a white supremacist patriarchy. The “storm” in these paintings glows with a powerful hot pinky-orange, emanating a new, feminine order. And by feminine, I mean: compassionate, empathetic, feeling based, intuitive energy.

works from the 2017 Exhibit