Estrangements
(2018-2019)
Shifts in the makeup of North American families have changed the way we experience and view family in contemporary society. And while our culture has made strides in representing diverse types of families in the mainstream today, by and large we still look to longstanding, limited depictions. This series highlights the discord between traditional representations of North American families, and evolving family dynamics within contemporary life.
After becoming estranged or distant from many of my relatives in my early adulthood, I learned to live without a strong familial support system, slowly piecing together my own sense of family through a small hodgepodge of relatives and close friends. Though this series of paintings examines larger cultural expectations related to family, these works are also about the hardship and pain of losing important family connections. While I believe my situation is complex and unique, the struggle to navigate kindred relationships is shared by many - especially in a time when many of us feel at such odds with deep-rooted cultural traditions around gender and familial roles.
Home Presentation Techniques
Image Description: A mix of abstracted and silhouetted lamps, toasters, armchairs and dressers appear as a topsy-turvy mess. Colors from all the across the spectrum create drips, color blocks, and painterly outlines throughout the artwork. In the bottom of the image, a yellow dresser with open drawers can be made out beneath layers of other domestic objects. In the top left corner two lamp-shaped contours in pink and deep purple crisscross, overlapping with the upside-down portrait of a bearded father with two sons slouched on a couch. The family of three is depicted in light graphite, and outlined in two shades of blue - they appear quiet in comparison to the clatter of the rest of the painting.
Oil, graphite and wax on patchwork canvas
40 by 30 inches
2019
Intergenerational Caregiving
Image Description: The interior of a lime green tiled bathroom is thinly painted on a surface created canvas scraps. Layered over the bathroom, repeated images of armchairs, irons, and vintage fans float around the canvas surface. In the bottom of the artwork, a grey-pink house is depicted with creamsicle orange contours; it sits within a thickly texture sections of blue wax, which looks like a tumultuous ocean flooding the house. The left side of the painting shows a family of women spanning three generations, sitting closely together, looking out at the viewer. Their image is sideways and askew, and rendered only in a ghostly graphite outline.
Oil, graphite and wax on patchwork canvas
36 by 48 inches
2019
Adolescence in the Family Context
Image Description: Three nostalgic interiors converge upon each other, creating disorder in soft pastels and bold blue lines. On the right side of the artwork is an awkwardly cropped image of a pink-tiled bathroom with a clawfoot tub. Two dining chairs with purple-grey cushions extend diagonally upwards from the bottom left corner. In the center of the painting is the light graphite outline of two children watching TV while sitting on the floor. Though the children are the focal point of the image, they are also overtaken by the other household objects.
Oil and graphite on canvas
24 by 30 inches
2018
Atypical Child Development
Image Description: A family of four is drawn in light graphite, shown from the waist up. While the father in the middle holds his wife and daughter tightly around the shoulders, the son stand off to the side, at a distance from the others. Scattering in layers over the ghost-like portrait is jumble of TVs, vacuums and stand-mixers, outline in soft blues, magentas, and oranges. The objects spin in orientation, as if they are floating in space.
Oil, graphite and wax on patchwork canvas
40 by 60 inches (Triptych)
2019
Dynamics of Early Childhood
Image Description: Amidst a chaotic jumble of household items floating in space appears the image of a man standing between his two daughters, depicted only in thin grey outlines. The man pulls the hands of his daughters towards his chest and grips them tightly. Showing through their image is a large staircase lightly painted in pale blues and greys. Brightly colored TVs, blenders, clocks, and shoes spin around the family like a tornado. The top left corner of the painting is a thickly applied section of deep red wax paint. This texture repeats in a bold, painterly online of blue around the whole family, holding them tightly together.
Oil, graphite and wax on patchwork canvas
48 by 36 inches
2019
Preparation for Marriage
Image Description: The transparent image of a bride and groom is cut diagonally in half and pulled apart. The bride’s face is painted over in light grey. A lightly painted orange dresser can be seen in the space created between them. Laid over the image of the dresser is the hollow drawing of a family of five, held together by a bright outline of pink and light blue. On the top right side of the painting, a large green sofa overtakes the composition. Line drawings of TVs and kitchen furniture swirl around the artwork’s surface.
Oil, graphite and wax on patchwork canvas
36 by 48 inches
2019
Attributes of Living Systems
Image Description: A man with an expressionless face is shown from the chest up, slightly slouched to his right. With his right arm stretched out, as if perched on the back of a sofa, he holds a young child in his left arm, pressed to his chest. The child’s head rests in the crook of his neck. Depicted only in graphite outlines, the father are child are held together by thick contour strips of blue. Swirling around them are simple images of irons, blenders, and chair rendered in thin washes of pale orange, grey-blue, fuchsia and purple.
Oil, graphite and wax on canvas
30 by 30 inches
2019
Individual and Family Development
Image Description: At the center of this jumbled painting is a thinly painted white clawfoot tub seen on a diagonal - its shower curtain extends upward and off the edge of the canvas. On the right side appears a family of four, depicted in graphite grey outlines and on an upside-down angle. Held in the mother’s arms, a baby reaches their arm out to the father, covering his mouth. The other child stands slightly outside the rest of the family, behind his father’s back. Cluttering the family’s portrait are silhouetted stand mixers, repeated and swiveling in space. On the left bottom corner is a blue shadow of the family. Through out the painting, patches of orange, grey-blue, and muted red show through from behind the disorderly layered images.
Oil, graphite and wax on patchwork canvas
30 by 54 inches
2018
Enduring Issues for Couples and Families
Image Description: A slightly tilted blue two-storey townhouse with bay windows appears as a first layer in this multilayered, abstracted painting. Intertwined with the image of the house is a hodge-podge of household items - clothes hangers, chairs, sewing machines and children’s toy. Several sections of the artwork are thickly painted with teal and magenta wax paint. Taking up the left half of the painting is the ghost-like image of a couple and their baby. The mother turns away from the husband and baby, as if she is about to walk off the side of the canvas.
Oil, graphite and wax on patchwork canvas
30 by 40 inches
2019
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Intro to Family and Consumer Sciences
Image Description: A bright blue vintage stove sits on a diagonal just off center - it’s accompanying yellow countertop stretch outward until they hit the edges of the canvas. Through the transparent stove and countertops is a clutter group of loosely painted vacuum cleaners. On the right side of the painting is the orange contour of an exhausted woman sleeping - only the top of her head and arms can be seen draped over a large amorphous block of burnt orange. The left half of the painting shows the graphite outline of a young family, shown from the waist up. A mother holds a baby slightly out from her chest. The father faces inward towards the mother and child, but is awkwardly pushed off the edges of the canvas.
Oil, graphite and wax on patchwork canvas
24 by 48 inches
2018
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Management in Home Meal Preparation
Image Description: In a very light teal outline, a stove and kitchen tools emerge as the first layer of the painting. Painted over the kitchen scene are a mix of domestic items and human figures. On the left top corner of the painting, the image of an armchair in transparent orange is repeated and overlaid atop itself. Blue desktop lamps and marron rotary telephones huddle in the bottom left side of the canvas. Seen sideway in the lower left corner of the painting is the portrait of three adults looking out at viewer - a man seated in the middle wraps his arms around the shoulders of two women, one of each side of him. They are depicted only in very light grey lines and held together by a bold blue and pale green wax paint stripes. Seen through them is the washed out image of the teal stove.
Oil, graphite and wax on patchwork canvas
30 by 40 inches
2019