Ridgewood Open Studios 2026
Arriving at the studio means entering a particular kind of creative noise. To my right, a neighbor's sewing machine hums throughout the morning. A few doors down, I'll often hear a woman singing over a track as a producer mixes a new pop song. And above me, actors rehearse Shakespeare, for what I imagine is a casting directors’ latest vision.
Earlier this month, the visual artists of the building had an opportunity to welcome guests from the Ridgewood community (and I had a chance to actually meet my neighbors).
As for my studio? I turned the space into a small gallery, hanging a lot of work that lived in sketchbooks or tucked away from view until now. Each wall represented a different chapter of my art practice, beginning several years ago and moving towards the present.
Works on Paper
In Spring of 2020, I restarted a latent drawing practice, working my day job from 9-5 remotely and spending time each evening to experiment for several hours. I had just moved into my first solo apartment a few months prior to lockdown–so let’s just say the pandemic was not exactly the type of solitude I thought I was signing up for. But I feel grateful for the opportunity to this day. My apartment became a sanctuary for my creative practice, and interiors became a ready subject. Experimenting with materials, I took pleasure in laying down messy oils and drawing back into it with colored pencil or graphite to indulge in drawing’s immediacy.
Love Made Hungry, drawings and studies in oil pastel, charcoal on paper, 2020.
Notes on Liquidity
By the spring of 2023, I was often traveling between Oakland, California, and my home in New York. Often in flight, I found myself working most often in a sketchbook, a way to take my art practice with me. I limited my materials to India ink and pencil on paper, keeping it simple enough to pack. While assembling this installation for the open studios, I was surprised to learn how much my color palette had changed in those few years.
Drawings in ink and graphite from 2023-present.
See more of these works on paper in the portfolio section of this site.
love is a force of nature
Spoils, oil on panel, 2023.
In 2023, I started a painting series, love is a force of nature. Drawing upon inspiration from Homer’s Hymn to Demeter, Ovid’s Metamorphosis and fifteen years of diaries, I began constructing a kind of mythic re-narration of Persephone’s abduction to the underworld. As an allegory for the seasons, it’s about rising after death and the kind of life force that is obviously indestructible.
Pomegranates were the entry point: like Eve’s apple, they represent a kind of temptation that forever changes the tempted. After many years drawing in an immediate, intentionally raw visual language (prioritizing gesture and instinct over technical polish) I returned to this way of working I first learned in high school. I wanted to see what I remembered about traditional representational art, as formal experimentation. Beyond that, the spirit of these paintings called for an approach that was deeply seductive; I was also drawn to the dark pigments that only oil paint can really articulate.
A mind-map of poetry, visual ideas and Demeter’s mythic narrative.
Alive to the future
Assembling the research, found images, and wealth of experimental studies, I'm returning my attention to the myth series with a goal of ten paintings by year's end. Storyboarded like a film, each work will correspond to a scene in the narrative: larger, darker, and bordering on the uncanny. Visions I’ve glimpsed combine all of these experiments into a single body of work: tightly rendered with the expressive, collage with a kind of realism.
I can’t say that I know what the works will ultimately look like, but the momentary silence in the studio feels open-ended and full of possibility.
