California dreaming

Abstract

I make large, lush oil paintings that employ devices and conventions from different traditions of abstraction like Color Field Painting and Abstract Expressionism, alongside traditions that use representation such as Vanitas, Photo Realism and Pop Art. I use my own personal experiences, images from pop culture, and the long rich history of Western Painting to create an unapologetically female voice. The attitude in my work and the images I choose playfully and critically isolate the highly gendered way all of us are raised and manipulated by the culture at large. Over the last three years of my graduate study at UT I have come to understand my work more thoroughly through thinking about it's interdependent components. Image/ Referent, Materiality, Abstraction/Representation and Metaphor. These components are difficult to separate from each other during the complex act of making, viewing and thinking about painting, however it has been a valuable exercise for me while working in the studio and writing this report.