ARTIST STATEMENT

My artistic practice is a way to protect, preserve and remember my experience of parenting. My daily life of raising children is best shown in the seemingly infinite moments of caretaking, which are ultimately temporary and fleeting. I am a mother to four children, and it’s very important for me to remain physically and emotionally connected. As a homeschooling parent, my primary goal is to build a protected space for them and to listen. My paintings are recordings of my careful observations.

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American Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt depicted the fleeting moments of the domestic spaces of women and children. Rather than being an impassive onlooker, she conveyed a deeper sense of connection with her subjects and gave women a kind of interiority not seen in paintings done by her male counterparts.  As an artist and mother, I also seek to portray my subjects, which are often my own children, with a sense of agency and wholeness. At the same time, I am aware of the artist-model relationship, but it is not one of power or domination. I do not offer my figures for consumption or decoration. My act of looking and listening to my children, oftentimes engaged in an activity they love, such as reading, playing, or enjoying themselves outside, is my method of slowing down time.

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I use my own photographs as a reference tool, but I include both gestural and realistic rendering so as to create a sense of motion and a feeling of immediacy. Children often draw our attention to things we would normally miss, such as a bug on the ground. My children have inspired me to gain more interest in wildlife conservation especially for local birds. My exhibits juxtaposing fleeting moments of childhood with endangered North American birds help viewers can make the connection between the transience of childhood with the fragility of the environment.