Unpainted Lives
I didn't begin these paintings as a formal series. They accumulated over time—one painting leading to another—but they kept circling the same question: What do we see, and what do we overlook? How do the stories we've learned shape what we believe we see?
Many of the animals appear as stencils or empty silhouettes, sometimes left as the white of the paper. I'm interested in that space. When a familiar form isn't filled in, we still recognize it immediately. Recognition comes first; understanding often doesn't.
I also use familiar visual language—children's book drawings, simplified silhouettes, decorative color—images we associate with comfort and innocence. We learn these shapes early in life: the friendly cow, the storybook pig, the bear in the woods. They live easily in our imagination, often disconnected from the realities of their lives.
Around them, the paint behaves differently. Monotypes bleed and drip. Colors collide. Some areas are beautiful, others slightly uncomfortable. The environment feels less controlled than the animals themselves.
In some pieces the animals are confined with bars or placed beside language describing what is legally permitted to happen to them. In others, the animal remains still while the surrounding space grows chaotic. A gold bear, a silhouette beside a capitol building—the work points quietly toward systems rather than individual events.
A few pieces turn inward. A cow and a pig appear in raw, exposed color, their edges rough and unprotected, each holding a small painted thought—a memory or possibility of sun, grass, and open space. These aren't illustrations of reality so much as acknowledgments of perspective: the difference between the life we imagine for them and the one we allow.
I'm not trying to shock. I'm interested in the moment when recognition slows down—when a viewer notices the gap between the image they grew up with and the life that image represents.
The animals stay simple—or invisible. The space around them does the talking.
I didn't begin these paintings as a formal series. They accumulated over time—one painting leading to another—but they kept circling the same question: What do we see, and what do we overlook? How do the stories we've learned shape what we believe we see?
Many of the animals appear as stencils or empty silhouettes, sometimes left as the white of the paper. I'm interested in that space. When a familiar form isn't filled in, we still recognize it immediately. Recognition comes first; understanding often doesn't.
I also use familiar visual language—children's book drawings, simplified silhouettes, decorative color—images we associate with comfort and innocence. We learn these shapes early in life: the friendly cow, the storybook pig, the bear in the woods. They live easily in our imagination, often disconnected from the realities of their lives.
Around them, the paint behaves differently. Monotypes bleed and drip. Colors collide. Some areas are beautiful, others slightly uncomfortable. The environment feels less controlled than the animals themselves.
In some pieces the animals are confined with bars or placed beside language describing what is legally permitted to happen to them. In others, the animal remains still while the surrounding space grows chaotic. A gold bear, a silhouette beside a capitol building—the work points quietly toward systems rather than individual events.
A few pieces turn inward. A cow and a pig appear in raw, exposed color, their edges rough and unprotected, each holding a small painted thought—a memory or possibility of sun, grass, and open space. These aren't illustrations of reality so much as acknowledgments of perspective: the difference between the life we imagine for them and the one we allow.
I'm not trying to shock. I'm interested in the moment when recognition slows down—when a viewer notices the gap between the image they grew up with and the life that image represents.
The animals stay simple—or invisible. The space around them does the talking.
