Read my artist talk

Below is the transcript of my artist talk, given at my Willow Street Gallery show “The Shape of Becoming” on June 8, 2025:

”Hi everyone—thank you so much for being here. I’m really happy to share this show with you, The Shape of Becoming, and to talk a little about how I got here, how the work came together, what inspired it, and try to share a little about how I think when I’m working on paintings.

I began painting during the pandemic. My “day job” then, as it is now, is family and commercial photography - during the coronavirus quarantine, I found myself on a sort of forced sabbatical as families put a hold on lots of things: photo sessions being one of them. I baked some sourdough bread and propagated my houseplants like a Victorian Lady Botanist, but that didn’t scratch my creative itch. 

Fortunately a photographer friend of mine was also a collagist, and I persuaded her to talk me through getting started over a Zoom call one afternoon. A few glue sticks and home decor catalogs later, I was off to the races. I found an online course on abstract composition, which opened my eyes to the ways that the rules I knew for making a beautiful photograph could translate into choices you make as you assemble a collage… and soon after that I took a 12-week online course that focused more on painting, and that set me on the path that has led to this moment, here together at Willow Street Gallery in a room full of my paintings. 

I’d like to spend a little time looking together at the pieces in this collection, because they do tell the story of my process. 

These three paintings here are the genesis of the entire collection: I often begin a fresh set of paintings with several 12x12 boards, the size allows for me to work on all three simultaneously. At this stage, everything is up in the air - I’m just mixing colors, putting swaths of color down on the panel, working out ways to arrange these shapes, and seeing what catches my attention, what makes me feel interested or curious or particularly excited. 

My process is very intuitive and kind of playful. I don’t usually start with a clear plan—instead, I just begin with a shape, a gesture, a color, and see where it leads. I respond to what’s happening on the surface as I go. Over time, patterns start to show up. Some things get covered, others come forward. It’s a slow build.

Each painting grows out of the last one in some way. I will intentionally carry over some fragment from one to the next - it might be the same colors or it might be some aspect of the way that elements interact. Eventually, a rhythm develops. A visual language starts to emerge, and I start to see connections I didn’t intend. That’s when I begin to understand what the work is really becoming.

A lot of what I’m doing is about iteration—about returning, revising, layering. Nothing is fixed until, well, until it needs to go up on a wall.  I find the direction through the process itself. It’s not something I know from the beginning—it’s something I discover through making, through trial and error, and through paying attention to what’s already there.

Now, you can probably tell that the five “Emblem” paintings on this wall are a bit of a side journey running parallel to these other pieces. Instead of filling the entire panel with these shapes, I’ve let these structures stand alone in a kind of open field of color. They might look like a logo or an icon - for me, the word emblem resonated with me to explain these pieces. They’re distinct and succinct. 

THe last piece I painted for this collection is Ignite, which you may be able to see, is a direct line back to Through the Veil, but on a larger scale. 

In terms of inspiration, I’ve always been drawn to the midcentury modern aesthetic—those clean lines, bold shapes, the balance between restraint and play. I also really love the Color Field painters, like Frank Stella and Alma Thomas, especially their use of color as something immersive and emotional— an end in and of itself. In fact, Alma Thomas has a painting called Mars Dust which makes use of essentially this same palette of red over a base of blue that shifts between deep ultramarine and teal, creating the same kind of visual shifts that you might be able to see in Chromostereopsis here. 

Ann Truitt has been a big influence too. She would glaze thin layers of color over and over on her paintings and sculptures, to build these subtle shifts which light could pass through to reflect back. I try to bring that same kind of layering into my own work, where earlier marks are still present, even if they’re eventually hidden. That layering becomes a kind of history—a record of the process.

This series was also influenced by a book called Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino. It’s the story of an imagined conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. Khan has required Polo to recount details of the cities he has visited in his travels - and while Polo describes wonders and curiosities in a very metaphorical style, it is possible, he tells the Khan, that all his stories are really about Polo’s beloved Venice. That in travelling the world, what Polo has really discovered is new ways of understanding his origin. That idea really resonates with me, and it’s something I try to express through these paintings. They aren’t just pictures—they’re records of a slower, and ongoing, becoming.

Ultimately, this show is about transformation—about repetition and change, about finding form through process. I hope the work invites you to reflect on your own path, and how we’re all constantly revising, reworking, and reshaping who we are.”