Traced in Echos

The inevitable, conflicting, heartbreaking, transition from girlhood to teenhood to adulthood frames the basis of this body of work. I paint by starting with figures, guided by a memory. Drawn initially to one color, I then pick up another and another, reacting and adjusting to whatever I put down. The figures in the work hold each other, run to, run away, collapse, are stretched, are molded, shaped, and compromised. The space around them does the same, fighting with each other until there is rhythm. 

 

Throughout my experience as a resident artist at the Hunt Gallery, my paintings reconstruct old memories through a reflective, echoed perspective, allowing me to remember. Remember sitting on the floor when we were all ten, braiding hair and laughing in the dark. Remembering running through the grass with bare feet, unaware yet that it will one day stop. Remembering when those naive perceptions shattered in our teen years, and figuring out how to piece them back together. In this residency, I have developed a collection of abstracted memories, stories, and moments throughout my life that continue to inform and challenge taught notions of femininity. 

 

These are the little notes in my winter coat pocket I haven’t worn since that year my arms got too long for the sleeves. They’re the tiny stones collected across hikes and parking lots and the seeds in your garage you always promise to grow next spring. When I take them all out, I weave them together like the cat’s cradle we used to play.