Ghosts of Girls I Could've Been & Once Was

April 14 to 25 | Harry Wood Gallery

Opening reception | April 15 | 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

“Ghosts of Girls I Could’ve Been and Once Was” explores the intricate interplay between personal identity, societal expectations and the archetypes that define the female experience. Rooted in both my own struggles with body image and witnessing the women in my life grapple with unattainable beauty standards, I use self-portraiture as a means to interrogate how our bodies become both deeply personal and socially constructed. The transformative impact of a severe car accident further forced me to confront vulnerability head-on, splintering my sense of self and deepening my inquiry into the body as a site of both fragility and strength. By employing the concept of the persona, I turn my own image into a tool for exploration, revealing the tension between how we see ourselves and how we are perceived.

I engage with art history through techniques of exaggeration, elongation and historical reference, reworking traditional representations of the female form. My work deliberately disrupts familiar narratives by replacing canonical subjects with my own image, inviting viewers to confront the distortions imposed by societal ideals. Figures in my paintings, adorned in sheer, decorative garments and bold makeup, challenge conventional portrayals and expose the mechanisms through which femininity is both celebrated and constrained. Through controlled interplay of opacity and transparency, my surfaces become layered narratives, mirroring the complexity of identity and inviting viewers to reimagine the female body as a space of active self-definition rather than passive objectification.