Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

I am an oil painter, I live in Ridgewood, and I help run Godspeed Arts, an artist-run studio and project space. I started painting at Wesleyan University, where I graduated in 2020. I am interested in creating pictures that are hard to know, that one can name but not place, moments that are specific and memorable but also elusive and slippery.

Are there any influences that are core to your work?

Malcom Morley and Peter Doig. Noah Davis is huge for me, I saw his show at the Hammer in the summer. There’s this sense of mystery in his work that inspires me; kind of scary but also magical. He cared so much about making art accessible and a part of everyday life for people. I’m from LA and his work makes me kind of homesick too; he brought people together and wanted to make LA a better place, and I aspire to that in my own work, wherever I am.

How were you introduced to the mediums that you work with?

I started painting in college, my professor, Tula Telfair, was a huge inspiration for me. She is totally obsessed with paint and when I met her I was just like, I have to spend more time around this person.

Is there a moment you look back on as being formative to the work you do?

When I was at a residency in Nebraska I started painting on larger surfaces (I had only ever really worked on small 8 x 10 panels) I was working on a painting with a lot of neon green leaves and I was so scared it looked like a painting from Painting I. There was so much space on the canvas and I started to have to make stuff up to fill up the canvas rather than just look to the photo I was working from for information. I think it was formative experience not just because I was putting more of myself into the work but also because I felt like I was reinventing myself as an artist, which was exciting and has become kind of addicting to me since.

What kind of imagery are you drawn to?

I often use Flickr to find source material. I like the vulnerability and imperfections of amateur photography: images with a harsh flash, blurry subjects, awkward camera angles. Many of those images were uploaded somewhere from 2000 to 2010, so they are also very nostalgic for me, and nostalgia is important to my work: exaggerating a feeling of sentimentality until it becomes a little creepy or foreboding.

When needed, where do you look for inspiration? How have these sources changed over time?

Recently this has been changing a lot! I am trying to move away from working from photographs. I am still painting figures, but I’m experimenting more with abstraction. I am drawing from my dreams and memories and I am looking to the painting itself for inspiration. I want to make a painting with a sense of mystery that isn’t purely narrative, but also isn’t arbitrary or an end in and of itself like an optical illusion. To make an image that a viewer wants to know, but can’t completely.

What are some common motifs in your work, and what do they speak to?

I often make images of home and family so themes of sorority, parenthood, marriage, and adolescence are present in my paintings. I draw, of course, from my subjective experiences, people and spaces that I do not expect to be recognizable or relatable. My interest, rather, is in blending my memories with images I am drawn to online to explore the slippery truth content of images and memory alike.

Can you share a memory of someone interacting with your work that lingers with you?

During the show Lily [Rand] and I had in October, someone came up to me to talk about the orbs of light in Sisters how different religious and spiritual traditions map energy through the body, and what it might mean if that energy pooled in the belly or hovered on the shoulder. For me, the orbs were ambiguous forms, resisting any one interpretation, and it was interesting to see someone use them as a clue or a way to read the logic of the painting.

Are there any areas that you’re interested in exploring further in your work? 

I have been working on a series of 25 small paintings on paper. For these new works, I’m working more from my imagination, memory and dreams than from photographs. When I work from a photograph, I am looking for ways to disrupt or disobey my reference, and I’m curious what imagery will come up when that resistance isn’t there. How I make paintings, what my subject matter is, all feels up for debate and each paper-painting is an experiment.

Do you have any rituals when you settle into your studio?

When I get to the studio I like to putter around for a bit before I start working; water the plants, make coffee, tidy up. It depends on my mood but some days I get there and lock in and leave when the sun goes down. Other days I take it really slow, get there early and chat with my studio mates, maybe have a nap, stay late and get beers and hang out. I‘m listening to music all day, my favorite album to paint to is Dianne Cluck’s Oh Vanille, and I’m going through a Sun Kil Moon phase.

How does your creative community now compare to your creative community when you were younger?

My community is mostly at Godspeed, an artist-run studio and project space that I manage with several other artists. We have twenty-five artists who have studios in our space, a fully equipped black and white darkroom, and an event space that offers regular programming like figure drawing and collage nights, as well as exhibitions, performances, and screenings. Since joining as a studio member and eventually becoming involved on the operational side of things, my creative community has grown bigger and more full than I could have imagined when I had just left college and was painting in my bedroom. I’ve met so many artists through Godspeed who are like family to me now.

Have there been any mentor figures for your practice?

Yes! So many — Tula Telfair, Elizabeth Dworkin, and Clare Grill. They are all very different painters and I’m lucky to have them as role models.

How do you manage tending to the variety of responsibilities in the work you do? How do you mitigate burnout or exhaustion?

I call my mom when I’m stressed out : ) She’s my rock and she gives the best advice.

What do you collect?

I have a rock collection and I have a sort of fledgling collection of refrigerator magnets. My favorite rock in my collection is a piece of petrified wood my friend found on the beach in Maine and gifted to me— it has these striations in the shape of a semi-circle, like a rainbow, but in all different shades of blue-ish gray. My favorite magnet in my collection is sort of meta— it’s from when I went to see the world’s largest marble collection!

Portraits photographed by Sophie Joseph Schwartz.
Interviewed by Luca Lotruglio.