“I am a narrative writer-director as well as a large scale photorealistic portrait painter. Everything I create comes from a deep love for humanity and my obsession to find the sources of our most heartbreaking societal conflicts. From my point of view, the answers to our biggest challenges can be reduced to love and shame. My perspective comes from a childhood of abuse at the hands of an alcoholic parent, where “love” and shame were on a constant and unpredictable loop.”
“I'm not telling a story, I'm grabbing your wrist and dragging you onto a ride you may not be ready for. That's how I've experienced life—I could never be ready for the abuse—in so many forms. My brain needs that relentless activity so the work is visual, musical and energetic; full of love from my deep heart and has my self-aware, zoomed out sense of humor about the bigger picture. The films are immersive experiences that pull the audience into theory, thought and new perspectives beyond the film. Thematically, my personal experience is all over the screen. I’m a queer woman and that’s in my films. I’m also a victim of multiple sexual assaults, so sometimes that shows up. More recently, my characters are falling in love, and they’re doing it when everything else is falling apart.”
“I simply could not communicate during my childhood and adolescence… maybe even into my early twenties. My dad seemed to intentionally misunderstand me as an act of abuse and he intimidated me into silence in various and dark forms. Appropriate socialization with other kids was tough and I stayed inward. I desperately wanted to find a place with people who understood me and instead of learning how to be social, I thought if I became really great at something, I could sort of skip that. Obviously I’ve learned, this approach has its limits, but it served me pretty well from Kindergarten to 12th grade. I remember thinking I have to become so good at art that it will get me out of here. I was six. We didn’t have money to spend. I had my first little start-ups like selling used golf balls and designing t-shirts, and bought art books and supplies at AC Moore. The one that I used and abused was a book on how to draw realistic portraits. I cried for hundreds of hours in frustration figuring out that shadows are more than lines, lines look like wrinkles. It’s values of darkness. Oo I like that- double meaning.”
“Growing up in a low-income household, you have to be resourceful to surpass that––resourcefulness is my most valuable tool. I’ve been able to materialize so much value out of so little over the course of my life.”