about

I grew up in Oklahoma as the second of eleven kids. I was homeschooled, and church was basically our only field trip. My first visit to an art museum happened in high school on a casual hangout with friends. I did not know what I was looking at, but something cracked open. It felt like the beginning of something that did not have a name yet.

origins

People imagine a strict religious household as tidy and peaceful. Mine was nothing like that. There were dishes everywhere, cereal glued to furniture, kids in every room, and someone always crying. Occasionally there was a very early bible study thrown in to remind us to take care of our souls, but mostly it felt like chaos with small interruptions of structure. In the middle of all that noise, I learned to find calm in small things. Color, light, and repetition became ways to carve out a moment of peace and to feel even a little bit in control.

“Color, light, and repetition became my way of carving out peace in the middle of chaos.”

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Art started the way it does for most children, through drawing because it felt good and gave me something of my own. I carried a That’s So Raven folder filled with my “best work” everywhere. Painting came later and created an entirely different kind of space. It was mine. No audience, no rules, no pressure to tie it to a lesson or a scripture. In a family of eleven children, it is hard to figure out who you are when everything orbits around the whole. Painting became the first place where I felt like an individual instead of part of a system.

“Painting became the first place where I felt like an individual instead of part of a system.”

place, oklahoma

Oklahoma still shapes the way I work. The state gets written off as flyover, and honestly that is fine. It is quiet here. The sky does most of the talking, and the colors find their way into my paintings whether I want them to or not. Being far from any official arts scene makes it easier to focus. Oklahoma tries to forget its history and tries just as hard to prove its worth. Belief in a self made destiny runs deep here, almost like a regional religion. Trying to make something great in a place that is often overlooked might lead to heartbreak, but you do it anyway.

“Belief in a self made destiny runs deep in Oklahoma, and that insisting lives in my work too.”

the work

All of that history shows up in my process. I work slow. I build layers until something feels honest. That can happen in a day or it can take a year. My paintings live in that middle space where nothing is settled but I keep returning to the surface. The colors may look joyful, but the making is often uncomfortable. It is a steady push and pull, searching for the moment a painting becomes balanced and alive.

“My paintings live in the middle space where nothing is settled but I keep showing up anyway.”

I ask myself often if a girl from Oklahoma, still in Oklahoma, can make anything great. The question pushes me more than it holds me back. I paint to make sense of belief, doubt, and whatever exists after both. I am not trying to escape where I came from. I am rearranging it into something that fits now. My beginnings shaped me. I honor them, even when they are complicated. My paintings tell that story piece by piece.

In the end, my work is about showing up and trying. The quiet audacity to believe I can.