Artist’s Statement

I paint in oil on tablecloths, bedspreads and garments. My work is large in scale, from 6ft-12ft and is hung as a tapestry, without a frame and directly on the wall. I stretch, unfold, and discover what may be hidden in a fold of a cloth. Objects woven, embroidered, and sewn long ago are painted to reveal a pattern, on to which a portrait or a figure is superimposed. Some images are painted into large manmade or natural landscapes where several layers of cloth are collaged together. I call my painting process “slow painting” because it may take me a year or more to complete a work.

A tablecloth, as I see it, is a receptacle for tears, shouts, blessings, and curses—a canvas for emotion. A nightgown, an apron—once cared for; are now abandoned. What remains is the memory of a vanished story, of silence, and of hope. These pieces weave together threads of generational family trauma—a history of arrests, deportations, and killings. When contemplating the concepts that come up in my art—female dependence and independence, beauty, violence, and vulnerability—I consider these questions: what does it mean to be abandoned by your country? How does strife shape the generations that follow it? How do we preserve the emotions of the past?