About

This collection started in grief. When Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, I found myself full of feelings I didn't know what to do with — rage, sadness, something complicated that didn't have a name — and I needed somewhere to put them. So I started drawing faces.

Women's faces, specifically. Women of all ethnicities, rendered in as much detail and honesty as I could manage, because I wanted to look at the real person underneath everything society layers onto her. That tension is built into every piece I make. The face itself, the actual human being, is in grayscale, rendered in quiet detail. The clothing, the background, the decorative world surrounding her is where all the color and pattern lives. The contrast is deliberate. What's most superficial gets the color; what's most real gets the detail.

The halos come partly from my deep love of Sandro Botticelli, whose portrayal of women, of curling hair and composed expression and the female form, has influenced me more than anyone else. But the halos mean something beyond that influence. There's something deeply uncomfortable about the way women get placed on a pedestal, worshipped as an idea, a symbol, or a role to perform. The actual human being inside that role goes unseen and unvalued. The halo highlights that contradiction. It's reverence and it's a cage at the same time.

I'm self-taught as a painter, which means my style developed entirely out of what I needed to say rather than what I was trained to paint. Fifteen years as a graphic designer shaped my paintings in ways I didn't fully recognize until collectors started pointing it out, with the bold shapes and the deliberate compositions. These portraits are my attempt to portray women the way they deserve to be seen, not as symbols or roles or decorations, but as complex, real human beings. I hope you feel that when you look at them.