YOUR VIBRANT COMPOSITIONS OFTEN FEATURE TIGHTLY FRAMED FIGURES INHABITING INTIMATE SPACES. WHERE DO YOU FIND INSPIRATION FOR THESE FIGURES? AND WHAT THEMES ARE YOU EXPLORING?

The inspiration for the figures comes from everywhere. My friends, my partner, my experiences, people I see on the street. Observing peoples’ natural poses and gestures always spark new ideas. Our bodies are so eloquent at naturally expressing themselves. As cliche as the idea is, most of our communication is non-verbal. So I find that creating images is a way to really richly explore that territory. Themes of the work involve desire, love, voyeurism, paranoia, and the anxiety of contemporary life.

I FEEL LIKE YOUR PAINTINGS CONTAIN SO MANY INTRIGUING ALLUSIONS TO OTHER AREAS OF POPULAR CULTURE INCLUDING CINEMA, FASHION, THE INTERNET ETC. DOES THIS RING TRUE FOR YOU? IF SO, WHAT CULTURAL REFERENCES DO YOU THINK ARE EMBEDDED IN YOUR WORK?

Absolutely. I am always looking at fashion, editorial photo shoots, music videos, film and television for inspiration. There are so many references in the work that all meld together. Some references are more conceptual, artists who have really influenced how I look at the world. Designers like Alexander McQueen, who in his early collections so effortlessly blended beauty and violence to create a truly honest representation of what it means to move through the world with a feminized body. I am always drawn to creators who investigate form and how it can be manipulated to explore complex narratives. Missy Elliot’s early music videos for example, how she played with shape and scale, blowing up the proportions of her body, playing to the perspective of the camera lens, was so genius and ahead of its time. I look to creators who understand the fluid nature of identity, that gender is essentially a joke but its ramifications are devastatingly real. How we are seen, preyed upon, embraced, or rejected. Art history always looms large in my mind and I continually reference other painters. The history of figurative painting is completely dominated by the male perspective, so it has always been important to me that I can contribute to the dialogue in a thoughtful and meaningful way.