I always say in my artist's statement that "I paint what's in my life or on my mind". The series of paintings I'm working on right now is a very good example of what's on my mind. As I watch the ongoing challenge to reproductive rights sweeping across America, I've returned to making studies of the female form but my interest in it is not really about the aesthetic but about the physicality and power of a woman's body. As I paint, I am troubled by attempts to remove control from women over their bodies. When I was undergoing cancer, my paintings focused on women's body too as I tried to find a way to take back some control after diagnosis. I painted to resolve my conflicted feelings about the treatments and here, in 2019, my fascination with painting beautiful women returns as another sickness comes out of remission to wreak its devastation on some women's lives and their rights to choose.
Each painting is loose, created on wild underpaintings of watercolor washes. The woman's body is the focus but the state of her mind is implicit too. You know her mood and my message is clear. Fight for women's rights before this cancer spreads.
