Like many young artists, I inherited and absorbed many rules from the painters before me and carried them subconsciously as if they were truths. I remember an artist I respected warning me to never be literary in my work. At the same time, large paintings were seen as the only real choice: small paintings somehow exposed a lack of confidence. Paintings that displayed a knowledge of craftsmanship were often dismissed and disregarded in favor of large, messy, bold strokes of line and color. And of course, there was the message to “paint like a man’. By the time I was 20 years old, I stopped signing my first name in hopes that the fact that I’m female would be hidden.

Years Later, I began to bring these ‘rules’ out into the light of questioning. I found myself drawn to paintings that went against all of what I’d inherited. I began to hunt down small, precise images laden with stories. I found Indian and Persian miniature paintings in the back halls of museums. The precision and saturated colors made them appear as painted jewels. At the same time, I started looking at Early Italian Renaissance paintings particularly those of Giotto and Fra Angelico. I loved the almost clumsy renderings and compositions. The simple and strange images from older Tarot cards called to me. They seemed like tiny portals into a different kind of world and I wondered if I could paint portals into my own world. I imagined creating paintings based on my own life stories, and then sending them out into the world as a sort-of postcard from my being.

I dove into the painstaking world of applying dry pigment with egg yolk onto gessoed panels, applying the pools of paint with narrow brushes. The images slowly appeared, often taking several years to complete. The small, precise strokes of the brush building up layers of color reminded me of repetitive tasks such as knitting or embroidering that can become a form of meditation.