Family Stories

The subjects of my paintings are all members of my family, from my maternal side. These include childhood photos of my mother. Everyone else in the paintings I only knew when I was younger, I was lucky to meet my great and great great maternal grandmothers, and my mother’s mother. These women all feature prominent roles in the paintings, as I depict some as babies, and then young women, into adulthood. I also feature my mom as a baby with her mom, and then again as a young woman. There are also three paintings of individuals who I never met, from my mom’s paternal side of the family. These are family members I only recently learned about and painted from reference photos I just saw for the first time recently. For me, painting these lost family members together with the family I grew up hearing stories about is a way of healing this separation, and forging a connection and lost history in their honor.