Drawing from the visual language of classical painting and Greek and Roman myth, my work reconsiders inherited representations of women through figures of my own making. Messy, feral, mystical, and occasionally hostile, these recurring characters resist the fixed ideals of traditional mythology and instead reflect the psychological complexity of being a woman and a mother in a post-Roe v. Wade America.

My recent work introduces the imagery and mechanics of 19th-century stage magic into this evolving symbolic language. Levitating women, bodies sawed in half, theatrical illusions, and other feats of apparent impossibility become vehicles for exploring transcendence and belief. I’m particularly interested in what happens when the mechanics of a “miracle” are revealed. By looking behind the curtain, I pull archetypal female figures out of the realm of idealization and fantasy, allowing them to become more contradictory, vulnerable, and human. Alongside references to magic and stagecraft, my work evokes the devotional language of patron saints, asking what overlooked experiences and psychological states might deserve icons of their own.

At the center of my research is the question of who gets to create the stories and symbols through which women understand themselves. My work considers the often-unrepresented “underbelly” of motherhood and imagines what new mythologies might emerge if women authored them rather than inherited them.