Artist Statement
I am a large-scale figurative painter focusing in working-class representation. I exclusively render found photographs from my family’s past. When choosing a photo I look for signifiers pointing to working-class experience (i.e. mass-produced commodities, pop-cultural iconography, etc.). I also look for subtle humor.
Gentrification’s impact on my Brooklyn neighborhood has incited an idiosyncratic nostalgia for the past, more specifically, the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Family photographs from this period function as relics—both archival document and a springboard for memory/visceral experience. Painting these images bridges a chronological gap in time and allows me to reconnect with events relegated to the past. My paintings also invite a public voyeurism into a very private/personal world. Overall, my artistic practice aims to assert my identity as a working-class female, as well as convey a subversive and conflicted sense of longing to the viewer.
Education
CUNY Queens College, MFA, Studio Art, 2011
CUNY Hunter College, BA, Studio Art, 2005
Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and the Performing Arts, Art, 2000
Exhibitions
2022 Cat Daddy, AHA Fine Art, Brooklyn, NY
2021 GIAF Open Studios, 4heads, Governor’s Island, NY
2021 Collective Health, Collar Works, Troy, NY
2020 OPPOSITIONAL GAZE, AlterWork Studios, Queens, NY
2018 Between Us, Groundswell Community Mural Project, Brooklyn, NY
2017 HERE/HEAR, Groundswell Community Mural Project, Brooklyn, NY
2017, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, 4 Times Square, New York, NY
2017, NASTY WOMEN Exhibition, The Knockdown Center, Queens, NY
2016, Governors Island Art Fair 2016, Colonel’s Row, Governor’s Island, NY
2016, Rover 2016 , Starr Space Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2016, GENERATIONS X: Razzle Dazzle!, A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2015, Are You a Summer?, Academic Gallery, Long Island City, NY
2015, Pop-Up Gallery Exhibition, 88 Orchard St., New York, NY
2013, Special Guests, Sardine Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2012, The Figure Now, Brooklyn Artist Gym, Brooklyn, NY
2010, Working Class Hero (M.F.A. Thesis Exhibition), C.U.N.Y. Queens College, Queens, NY
Gallery Representation
2022 Jenn Singer Gallery