Describe your style in one sentence:
Slow and quiet, pensive and still.
How did your style evolve?
I used to strictly paint in acrylics. It was the one medium I had a breakthrough with at RISD and I clung to it like a colorful, plastic albatross. I had a realization that as I was working into an image what I was missing was the original line drawing of the piece. I would have these pangs of regret as I started to go over pencil with opaque paint. The natural progression was to scale back paintings into pen and ink line drawings. Over time I started reincorporating color using watercolors and colored inks.
You have a very unique way of painting faces, especially eyes. How did that come about?
As for my character’s eyes, I can only say that I have an estranged relationship with vision. I was told that I was born clinically blind. I don’t know how true this is, or if this is the correct definition, but I have terrible eyesight – corrective surgery terrible eyesight. I wear glasses that enlarge the size of my eyes for anyone looking in and without my glasses the world becomes very blobby. Colorful, but blobby.
Can you share a little bit about the background of At Sea?
At the time I was taking excess paint from my palette and I made layered cloud shapes on scrap pieces of paper. I was drawing sailors and mermaids, mostly because I had become irate at the mainstream notion of mermaids being anything but killers of the sea. Other images from this short series are mermaids dragging sailors down to their death or swimming over piles of bodies on the floor of the ocean.
Who/what are your creative influences?
Atmospheres of specific environments and memories are the biggest influences on my work. Most of my ideas spring from long walks. It’s how I primarily get around and often I get stopped in my tracks taking in the patterns of certain plants, of how the sky is at a certain moment. Walking also lets me sort out things that have been stewing in my head.
What’s the first picture you can remember drawing as a child?
I can remember painting with primary-colored tempera paints at an easel in kindergarten. I can remember looking at other kids’ paintings and thinking that it was ridiculous to paint a blue line across the top of the page, a green line across the bottom with an expanse of white in between and say that the blue stripe was the sky. It really irritated me.
What things have you seen recently that are going to inspire a piece of art?
A few years ago I read In the Heart of the Sea and I haven’t been the same since. I am hoping to attend a residency in Nantucket where I will be doing research for a new body of work. The ideas that I am working on will focus on Quaker women of Nantucket during the age of whaling. It’s going to pull together aspects I like to obsess over… repetitive plant pattern, water, images of women, with concepts of isolation and self reliance.
If your art was music, what would it sound like?
Julee Cruise meets John Bonham’s drum solo on Moby Dick with a Katamari, high score intermission.
What music is rotating on your iPod?
Will Oldham, Destroyer, Belle and Sebastian, Jens Lekman, Dinosaur Jr, Guided By Voices, The Wedding Present, Klaus Nomi and The Cars.
Could you share three things in your work space that inspire you?
1. Three small portraits of girls that started my collection of Victorian and Edwardian photographs.
2. A former roommate of mine removed and pieced together an image from Life magazine – it’s a boy carrying a lamb whose tail has just been clipped and there is this blood spray on the lamb and the boy.
3. A print by Jo Dery that says " Hey baby, this world is fucking full of magic."
What other art do you have on your walls?
I have a series of posters from Providence artists, The Little Friends of Printmaking, Carson Ellis, Jack Long, Amy Ruppel, Ray Fenwick, Nigel Peake, Evah Fan and photos by my dad.
What websites do you check out regularly?
Pitchfork, Etsy, Flickr, Huffington Post, Drawn!, Illustration Friday, Margaret and Helen and Design*Sponge.
What are your most treasured possessions?
I have a doll that my mom made out of white corduroy with yarn braids and gingham cheeks, a collection of smashed coins and a ring from the carousel at Ocean City, NJ.
What are your vices/guilty pleasures?
Whiskey, coffee, macarons (to be specific, they’re not macaroons).
Could you share something about yourself that makes you blush!:
I don’t like being the center of attention. Ever.
If you had to change careers, what would be next?
Marine biology.
Are there any upcoming shows or projects you’d like to share?
I am on an extended vacation right now, so I don’t have anything directly coming up, just some hanging out time and time spent at residencies.
