I think often about how much of ourselves we inherit before we are old enough to question it. There are generations of expectations about what it means to be feminine—how we should look, behave, present ourselves, and take up space. The women in these paintings are participating in some of those inherited rituals, but they are also making them their own. What interests me is the possibility that something imposed upon us can become something deeply personal: a language of care, a source of connection, and a way of finding ourselves in one another.
The fleeting light throughout the paintings comes from this same feeling. I wanted the light to behave almost like a memory—appearing, disappearing, catching on a face or a mirror, and then moving somewhere else. It passes through these spaces the way time passes through our relationships. A bedroom, a bathroom, a college house, or a trip with friends can feel completely insignificant while we are inside it, and yet years later, those places can contain entire versions of ourselves.
The reflections are important to me for the same reason. Light enters a space and is never reflected in exactly the same way twice. It changes depending on what it touches. I think our relationships with other women work similarly. We are constantly reflecting pieces of ourselves back to one another, while also seeing ourselves differently because of what someone else has shown us. There are parts of who I am that I would not recognize without the women who have reflected them back to me.
Portals is therefore as much about transformation as it is about femininity. It is about the people and places that quietly change us before we even realize we are changing. It is about the intimacy of being witnessed by another woman, and about how much of our identity is formed in relationship to those we love.
