Summertime Diary

2020 - 2022

These works were created by layering close-up imagery of bodies with washes of warm paint and gestural strokes of writing. The series grew to be named “Summertime Diary”. Creating them served as a way to release my own thoughts and emotions during time in my studio, and embedding that energy into material form. This work holds the softer pleasures of nostalgia. I see nostalgia as gratitude in the past tense, or the existence of pleasure in memory. 

Pre-pandemic, I had been creating work which studies imagery used in depicting girls on social media, but as the world was sent into an introspective and withdrawn period in 2020, I noticed I began painting with a sort of longing for connection, and my paintings became almost like warm and nostalgic odes to closeness and intimacy. As I watched my new works unfold during that time, I noticed an evolution back to works I made as a teenager, works that relate back to my own body and the relationships between these themes of connection, longing, and the bewildering vulnerability and strength of our bodies.