the faceyou keepunderneath

Statement

I paint the moment a face stops being certain of itself — where a mask lifts and it isn't clear which layer was the lie. Hair that keeps growing past where the skull ends. Hands that hold a second face up to the light like they're checking it still fits.

The women in these paintings are never quite alone: a double waits behind the eyes, a doll's face floats free of its body, a porcelain shell is pried away to reveal not skin but another shell. I'm interested in identity as something worn rather than owned — assembled, adjusted, occasionally taken off.

Working in oil lets the flesh stay wet-looking even where it shouldn't — a bruise-blue, a wound-red — so the grotesque and the beautiful never fully separate.