Everything You Need
These paintings explore complex and vital relationships between humans and animals, and offer an immersion into beauty, the erotic, and temporality, where figures engage in exchanges of humor, shamanic transference and intimacy as peers, co-conspirators, paramours, family members and thespians.
Animal characters function on several levels in these works. They are avatars – the manifestation of a deity in bodily form; incarnate and embodied, expressions of a person, an emotion, or an idea. They are always close by as the Friend or the Familiar. I also point to our interrelationship with animals, our shared sentience, origins, and futures. Their fate will be ours and our fate will be theirs, particularly in relation to the climate crisis, global deforestation, and species extinction.
Each piece in this series is a self-portrait which engages strongly with the collective and personal unconscious. The works would be incomplete without representations of my Jewish ancestral identity and traditions. The Hebrew iconography in Everything You Need includes representations of biomorphic menorahs, Hebrew pottery and oil lamps, and repetitive lines suggestive of the lines on a tallis (prayer shawl).
The question is raised as to why a Jewish woman artist would choose to paint openly eroticized work including the representation of a nude female figure juxtaposed with sacred Jewish objects. The poetic structure of the ways in which I combine these fragments to create novel constructs is itself a form of abstraction, and it honors the complexity of the experience of the divine as well as the impossibility of defining it with reductive clarity.
The erotic and the sensual emerge in these paintings, not separate from but intrinsic to the expansive ecosystem which is sentient life, while the female experience in its depth and breadth play a primary role. The characters in the series engage in a highly physical expression of exchange with the Other, as lover, mother, friend, and intrigue, swimming and wallowing in that dance, that puddle.
In “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power”, Audre Lorde refers to a sense of deep satisfaction, beyond the sexual deceptively portrayed in the pornographic – elevated by a profound feeling that lives in the joy and fulfillment of a woman’s being. This is the embodiment and lived experience of the women in Everything You Need.
Kelim
This is an intimate series of works which explore an ancestral narrative, cultural identity, exile and introspection, personal mythology and sexuality. Animals, ritual practices, cultural objects and markings populate the personal iconography in these paintings, while also addressing complex, ancient themes of human and animal interaction. The relationships I explore between the female figure and the creature has roots in cross-cultural mythology, biblical story, and feminist and shamanic engagement. In this series I explore the varied beauty and sometimes awkward angles of the wild and mythical animals that exist in our inner and outer lives. Motion and the possibility of movement weave throughout these paintings. This series is additionally inspired by imagery of animal gods from ancient cultures; the title and aspect of these characters expressing kinship with the wild creatures that live in our homes, forests and dreams.
Nude on a Fern Couch
In this series I explore the tension & intensity between what may be [perceived as] the wild and the human arenas, and voyeurism and introspection. Through the depiction of the (nearly nude) supine or reclining female figure in a (suggested but false) wild setting, the “tropical” palette of this series mirrors the tropical fern print/suggestion of the couch, which in some of these pieces begins to merge with the nude, bringing the external to the internal. The emotion of this series is inner directed, suggesting a wholeness in solitude and self, while there is the gaze of the viewer, become witness to an innately personal moment. These are mixed-media paintings made with acrylic, charcoal, and pastel on canvas or board.
Animalia
I explore the varied beauty, emotional intensity and awkward angles of the wild and sometimes mythical animals that exist in our inner and outer lives. These paintings are often inspired by imagery of gods from ancient cultures; the title and aspect of these characters are a way of showing respect and kinship with the wild creatures that live in our homes, forests, dreams, and who inhabit the occasional vision. Vivid color, loose mark making and abstract elements are hallmarks of my figurative expressionist style.
Carousel
My Carousel series of mixed media paintings examine the emotional complexity & ambivalence integral to familial relationships, using the carousel as a metaphor for family life. The implied danger of wild animals and precariously seated figures in motion express the fragility of the individual riders, their relationships to one another and to the carousel animals. When I began creating this series I was simply taken with the old world glamour, vivid color, repetitive motion and faux wild animals in the carousel experience. As I created more pieces in the series however, I saw I was exploring a deeper emotional depiction of my experience of being a parent and of raising children within my own family. Each of these works is between 11” x 14” and 30” x 40”, and created with acrylic, charcoal and pastel on canvas and board.
Calathea
A Minnesota tropical conservatory inspired this series of paintings of Calathea plants. I have never been truly inspired to paint a plant prior to seeing the calathea with its cachophny of fabulous vivid green 2-toned leaves growing simply Everywhere in Every Direction. They speak to me of fecundity amidst confusion and profusion, and I celebrate that in these pieces. These are small paintings between 4” x 4” and 8” x 8”, all mixed media using acrylic, charcoal and pastel. They are created on paper mounted on board.
Still Life
The drawings in the Still Life series explore a vivid color and form based experience of the expectation of corporeal and oral pleasure. Each piece is 6” x 6”, drawn with oil pastel and pencil on board.
5 Lemons & A Squash
In this series I explore an small, intimate and personal approach to traditional still life subject matter. This series of works references pen and ink still lives while employing a vivid palette in oil pastel, and cross-hatching in pencil. The sensual beauty of the form of each fruit (and squash) is indulged in every drawing. Each piece is 4” x 4” paper.
Tandem
Tandem, explores points of psycho-physical intersection between mothers and children, and movement & the possibility of movement, particularly as it relates to the maternal touch. These paintings refer to the visual history of the Madonna & Child and the legend of Romulus & Remus. I am also interested in the unexpected meeting of conflicting archetypal female roles, and the celebration of a particularly feminine experience of intimacy. Each piece in this series is between 18” x 24” and 40” x 55”, painted with acrylic, charcoal and pastel on canvas.