This body of work renews the language of painting with Feminist élan vital. In the Alchemical Bride series, I occupy formal aspects from Cubism, blending them with Pop Art, Surrealism, and Feminist historicism to create a new language that I call Cubism 3.0. 

My paintings enrich painting with the mythical language of alchemy by centralizing the bride as the source of meaning.  Here the bride embodies Carl Jung’s interpretation of alchemy as a metaphor for the individuation towards the Self. Alchemists called the furnaces in which base matter was transmuted into gold the “House of the Chick” and the “womb”. This play of words intrigues me, as it situates the act of transformation within the human form. In the midst of the #MeToo movement, it seems critical for me to celebrate the elevated female body, imagining the liminal body of the bride as a site of distortion and transformation. Reimagining the female form and its historic erasure as the actual source of value and meaning in painting and in life, brush-stroke by brush-stroke.

I began by cutting out over 1000 bridal images from magazines. These I distress and distort using mirrors, reflections, and collaged materials. I set these alchemical experiments up in the studio and paint. Each is a liminal imago– dissolving and coming into focus all at once.

Dreaming the Bride Catalog (free download)

Oil and Acrylic Paintings

Watercolors

Vellum

Grisailles

Blue Period Grisailles

Rose Gold Period Grisailles

Drawings

Engravings