Alchemical Bride 23 (Queen Puabi) Painting

Think of me as a visual Jungian. For over a decade my work has explored identity as a varied and hybrid representation, centralizing the figure as the site where myths, archetypes, and histories from different communal fonts collide. Most recently I am preoccupied with the Philosopher’s Stone archetype. Alchemists called the furnaces or ovens in which base matter was transmuted into gold the “House of the Chick” and “the womb”. This play of words intrigued me, imagining the liminal undomesticated body of the bride as a site of distortion, heat, pressure, and transformation. I began the series by distorting images of the bride using mirrors, reflections, and collaged materials. I set these experiments up in the studio and paint. Each is a liminal imago– dissolving and coming into focus all at once. Formally, I think of these as Cubism 3.0– engaging aspects of Analytical and Synthetic Cubism through a feminist lens and a nod to Pop. Injecting the patriarchal formalism of that seminal movement with mythic content. Reimagining the female form and her historic erasure as the actual source of value and meaning.