I used to make pretty paintings. For the last ten years that's what I tried to do. I love them and hope to return to them someday. But right now, we are living in strange times. I can no longer make pretty paintings in my little studio. Something happened, and now I am too angry to paint. I am too angry to write an artist biography about myself and the paintings I used to make. The anger began the night the election was called, it bloomed in my chest just a few inches from my unborn son's head. I was eight months pregnant in November 2016 when I woke up to the sounds of sirens, screaming and helicopters. The unimaginable candidate had been elected, and beyond anger I felt afraid. Maybe my voice really doesn't matter. Maybe I don't count. Maybe there's nothing I can do. Maybe. But maybe not.
After I had my son I wanted to still keep my art practice going but had a very time consuming painting process. Especially after Trump was elected, I felt this really strong drive to make sure that every single day I really lived my values. Like, it’s not enough to just care about art, and women and feminism anymore. I really wanted to turn those values into a verb. That’s where my recent series of work was born.
I thought about the most basic way to paint my experience was to actually document what my son was doing every moment of the day. With his birth my life went from being my life to being all about caring for his life. Feeding him. Changing him. Cleaning him. Like most new parents, I didn’t sleep for more than 3 hours at a time for weeks, and that’s not hyperbolic at all. For each hour of time with him I kept track of his activity with a small painted activity monitor which became key to new practice. I was painting and parenting, every day. This project grew into Keeping Time, which then became Invoice the Patriarchy. At the same time, I've been painting my changing body in my Mom Body series and writing about my changing life and mind in my Parent Poems.
Parenthood has not been at all what I expected. It's been much harder, but also the most prolific time in my creative life. I hope you'll take a moment to look at some of this new work, purchase some, or just follow along here or on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.