Because We’re Here

There has been a fundamental shift, an evolution, in almost every aspect of my identity since 2018. The personal and the professional. My relationship to family and home. I have made all of these paintings and they somehow have helped make me feel more at peace with a present that looks vastly different from the future that I had envisioned.

I started this work during the winter of 2024 at my grandfather’s desk, pulling from different sources that resonated with me. I wanted to see the words and images together. I wanted a bulletin board above my desk but also couldn't justify the expense. One of my lifelong best friends told me to paint this house shape on the wall. It became a place that held words, ideas, and works-in-progress. Its contents are constantly shifting and changing, but the recurring theme: open hands.

Up until this point, I have been an outward-looking maker. I have enjoyed making images to celebrate and memorialize other people, significant words, and moments. Often when I have made artwork it has been for a functional purpose — show posters, album artwork, a t-shirt design. It feels significant that this is the first time that I have made a body of work that was really about understanding my own interiority in the present. The energy to make these images felt reflexive, and I am continuing to learn from the experience. Preparing for this show has made me reflect on experiences, ideas, and work that goes back decades.