stories of heavenly F. (2023)

In 4 paintings, I explore the theme of falling within the context of our current time, responding to the influential "isms" that shape our cultural landscape. I present the aftermath of a fall not as something shameful or petrifying, but as a liberating, even enlightening, human experience. Through falling, we uncover the strength to endure life’s inevitable decay and shadow. I see each fall as both an appeal and a challenge to live fully. What we avoid within ourselves, fate compels us to encounter in the world around us.

I painted babies from over 2 decades of experience in obstetric care. Watching a newborn take its first breath felt like receiving a kiss from the divine. Placing the infant into the mother’s arms for her first embrace felt like witnessing a second birth. In that moment, the pain of labor disappeared, overwhelmed by the immediacy of new life. A quiet surrender began.

I chose a simple palette to challenge the racial prejudice still embedded in contemporary society—including within medical communities. Privilege, power, and entitlement continue to align with race. Through subtle visual strategies, my paintings confront and comment on this persistent bias, inviting viewers to question what remains normalized and unspoken.

Through painting, I create portals into the language of a personal dream, using color and form to express what words cannot. I paint human and animal figures shaped by accident and chance, avoiding the illustrative while embracing irrational mark-making. My images remain imaginary—melancholic, eerie, and open to interpretation. Each form holds a duality, resisting the simplicity of emotion or abstraction. I offer no logical answers, only questions. The paintings, as a gestalt, reflect a deeply subjective view of the dream state. They evoke curiosity rather than clarity. The vaguely formed bodies hover between presence and absence, as if longing to speak or reach out—yet always stopping just short of contact.

:n my paintings of Pan—the mythic goat god—I channel the raw edge where nightmare meets inspiration. Pan enters not as a pastoral figure, but as a chaotic force that unsettles and ignites. His horned presence in the dreamworld stirs a primal terror, yet also a strange, electric awe. I paint him in fractured color and distorted form to evoke that collision: fear tangled with fascination. To be in Pan’s presence is to lose control of reason and surrender to the wild psyche. 

These works wrestle with that encounter—the moment imagination unbinds itself from logic. Pan does not comfort; he provokes. Yet in that rupture, something stirs: A vision. A howl. A revelation through fear.