This body of work is a fresh wound. So many deeply personal decisions were made in the process of creating Safekeeping and around the time this work was made. My relationships with the members of my family are complicated and created around adjustments of expectations and traditional ideals of how family should behave and care for one another. I struggled with how to depict my loved ones in a way that honored their internal battles with their own burdens but also with each other during this time of unprecedented uncertainty and disaster. I then struggled with how to depict myself as they see me–or really–how I am when I am with them. This work is raw–not like raw canvas–but the kind of raw that’s uncomfortable for me to look at. This work is filled with anger, a sickening sadness, uncertainty, but also an unbearable amount of care and compassion. These paintings are diary entries. Reactionary responses, sometimes answerless questions and at times repetitive, embarrassing trash.

 

Instead of paintings of my family and myself made through the lens of an artist, trying to find the balance of depicting them with honor but also honesty, these works were made with the lenses of a daughter and a sister. There’s a level of confidence an artist brings to their medium, a studied style they feel comfortable presenting to the viewer. In Safekeeping, I have tossed that confidence aside, embraced the awkward, uniquely strange, and fumbling uncomfortability that is being a family member.

 

Part I of this series is about them and myself. Part II is about me briefly without them. I hope you view these works with care, not just of me and my family, but also for yourself and yours.