In my multifigural oil paintings, I construct autobiographical narratives centered around the motif of absence. I often omit human presence from work, enabling pillow mannequins, as my surrogate, to confront personal trauma. In their creation, I experience an ambivalence of disclosure. Their large scale seems to contradict the desire to withhold information. 

Consequently, I find myself plumbing the gray spaces of opacity. Opacity has become both a positive means of reclaiming space for the colonized and a trauma coping mechanism. Instead—the formal opacity of my work generates an oppressive atmosphere. Light filtering from windows and doorways are depicted as passages of transparent paint. Transparency becomes an illusion, a means of escape just beyond reach of the prone figure.

My asexuality has been a source of personal trauma, engendering issues of intimacy, and consensuality. Accordingly, I apply my paint in one layer, each brushstroke butting against each other. The technique, which I term the virginal brushstroke, is concerned with maintaining the purity of each gesture. Sexual purity, which has traditionally been associated with celibacy, becomes entangled with my natural state of asexuality, thereby complicating my identity. 

I compose my paintings from multiple views, ranging from omniscience to the perspective of the prone figure. The narrative in my works are often deceptively literal, tempting viewers to hastily determine victim and perpetrator. Upon closer view, minute details make these designations suspect.  Out of fear of being on the wrong side of the fence, the viewer is left unable to determine which figure to empathize with.