Grad Show 2025

Growing Pains – A collection of paintings

I’m an artist who works primarily with oil paint and textiles. I have a history of sewing and quilting, and have incorporated that into my paintings by stretching fabric instead of canvas, utilizing soft floral patterns from bedsheets. I paint vibrant alien-like figures in scenes of adolescent domesticity as a symbol of girlhood. Exploring ideas of gender performativity and what does it actually mean to be a woman? Thinking of the way behavioural rules are enforced and the reckoning with enjoying “girly” things while also understanding gender as a social construct and tool of oppression. I paint traditional expectations and romanticized experiences around girlhood, alongside the reality. Pink, soft florals with messy bedrooms and hair-filled razors. Using this as a way to juxtapose the feminine, not with what is traditionally thought of as masculine, but instead mundane, common things, not grounded in misogynist stereotypes. I create scenes and whimsical atmospheres around these figures to emphasize this. Displaying multiple works as a cluster with figures and still lifes, all in conversation with one another. 

For my last term at Emily Carr, I created a series of five paintings to be displayed all together in conversation with one another to expand on this world.