I paint as a way of searching for identity. I work from the narratives in my mind with references to historical interiors, incorporating imagery of stages, theaters and projections.

In my interiors there is an emptiness of unpopulated rooms and hints of a story. I start by 'building' out the space, studying architectural drawings and archival photographs, then add narrative detail through memory and family history, referencing the interiors of my childhood, or the Lower East Side tenements of my ancestry. The imagined performances on the stage conveyed through these objects are an exploration of self, both lived and imagined.

Moving from NYC to the Midwest during the pandemic allowed for a deep shift back towards my own work after a decade of teaching and raising young children. My current series of paintings grew out of an interest in painting’s ability to embody, or at least investigate, perception and illusion. This new work explores Italian and Greek theatre machines of the 1500’s, the concept of the deus ex machina, and the thought that painting has the power, though unlikely, to alchemize an abstract idea or desire into a realized form.