My work explores the experiences of women through highly expressive and at times abstracted figurative mixed-media compositions. I am interested in presenting an authentic view of women, nuanced in their expressive qualities, through the use of gestures, patterns, choice of materials and color. Maximalist in nature, my work uses a wide range of materials including inks, watercolors, acrylics, collage, cyanotypes and multi-layered panels with concrete and resin. The large scope of materials composing the figures in my work is a metaphor for the complex makeup of a woman’s identity; something that has been historically portrayed through a cisgender male lens often in a confining, reductive way. Working in a seemingly unending era of women still fighting for equality and the acknowledgment of the validity of our experiences, I find this work to be necessary. I intentionally juxtapose opposite aesthetics together in a single piece—loose with orderly, matte with glossy, bright with dull—as a symbolic embrace of the elasticity and diversity of women’s identities. As a woman painting women, I focus on shifting away from depictions of women catered to the male gaze, and instead honor the experiences of women with an honest approach. I strongly feel the world can and does benefit when the experiences of women are regarded and presented authentically.