Dream Girl Painting

She has it all: The charm, the wit, the degree, the hair-flip, the crop top. The patience, the persistence, the goals. She is a beautiful bundle of chaos that makes him feel safe. She loves her own company, she takes care of others. They say she wants too much for herself. She’s her own Dream Girl. ______ Just because a story was told, does not mean it was heard. The Pieces Of The Whole collection explores story-telling and how narratives about women are rewritten/edited/retold to benefit the listener, whoever that may be, for better or for worse. The idea that women are not always in control of the narratives of their own lives, or how their stories are shared with others, depending on context, is expressed through this collection using the unifying imagery of peaches. This series began as studies of peaches for an upcoming collection entitled She’s A Sweet Peach (working title). As the artist’s work is performative in nature, these paintings were part of larger canvases that were later cropped and assembled with both intentional and unintentional approaches to editing - an exercise for the artist in detachment regarding the need to control the narrative. This physical re-assembling of canvases on smaller frames is an attempt to explore how many smaller stories can contribute to the “bigger picture”, and it can still be beautiful, even if there are parts missing. Intriguing parts of certain paintings were left behind while other parts were included due to dimensional limitations of the frame. These limitations that were beyond the artist’s control reinforced the importance, as well as the potential harm, behind censorship.