I start with a woman—a historical figure whose similarity to myself I hope for, fear, or, often, both. These women (e.g. Zsuzanna Fazekas, The Angelmaker of Nagyrév; Ann Trow Lohman, The Wickedest Woman in New York) found ways to navigate a public not built for them, weaponizing the private. In my paintings, I imagine a world in which they might have existed—a time and place built from period wallpaper patterns or heritage paint palettes. In doing so, I imagine their person too. Did they trace their own complexities and contradictions? Did they study the many overlapping patterns of their homes, finding shifting borders and hidden power structures, as I do?
Pattern (the decorative, the designed, the carefully purchased, the mundane, the lived-in) provides cover. A mask that allows me to slip by undetected, to undo some of the flatness and passivity of painting's beauty, of "women's history".
I am a painter, most days. Text and sculpture allow me to assert, to demand, to be direct and maybe radical.