I am particularly sensitive to color. As a little girl I agonized over the decision to spray paint my bike hot-pink or cherry-red.  I chose cherry-red only to repaint it hot-pink within hours. I remember the struggle between the perceived strength of red and the femininity of pink. Pink won, but with the caveat that "hot" still gave it "balls". I was six.

Around the same time, I went to the county fair and wanted very much to have my face painted. When the face painter lady held up the hand mirror for my inspection, I was so disgusted with the mediocre results I ran screaming into the nearby river and violently scrubbed the offending, imperfect butterfly from my face.

My work still deals with issues of "hot pink" and "perfection". Gender roles, sexuality and societal conditioning have all found their way into my paintings. 

Early training in theatre, where I studied Shakespeare and Greek Drama, gave me a template for a stylized and theatrical exploration of the human condition. My family history, as the granddaughter of a German Jewish psychiatrist, who worked in infamous mental hospitals in the 1950s and 1960s, also informed the concept behind the paintings.

I paint in oil because of its superior ability to represent flesh and blood. Through painstaking application my leading ladies, theatrically lit and often engaged in some sort of mini-drama, are brought to life. They tell a story that the viewer may recognize, or depict a point of view that may be new to them. Whatever the case, I intend to hold up a mirror in which the viewer finds relevance to their own experience, but I hope not to send them screaming into the river.

I've come to accept my obsession with detail and pursuit of unattainable perfection in my work, and I have to admit the words "hot pink" still give me a thrill.