“An Abolitionist Summer” (2020)
In early 2020, I started grappling with how to weave conversation about antiracist white identity into my painting, and later that year, with how to uplift abolitionist ideas through painting.
I started the pivotal “White Friends Go for a Walk” (bottom of page) in March of 2020. By summertime, I was working white-skinned “flesh-tones” into some of my abstract paintings (for the sake of naming the unnamed), although not as explicitly as in my current “Fleshy Pinks” series.
This series is about everything that 2020 held: upheaval + unraveling, gifts + losses, grief + hope, learning to live in the both/and, plus many long walks in the hills. I firmly believe that painting can celebrate the beauty of our world, while also starting important conversations. This idea is foundational to my work, and it crystallized while I was making these paintings.