In my family we express love through food, so we cook and bake a lot for each other. People view cakes as sweet and simple, with an innocent quality that represents concepts of women and femininity. As a painter, I make faux cakes to challenge this definition and to reflect women’s pain and sacrifice. I mix joint compound with acrylic paints for color. I use traditional cake decorating tools to pipe on linework and star-shaped dollops, then I use impasto techniques with palette knives to create sweeping blends of pigment. I paint directly on the cakes with brushes to create saturated color fields. The imagery depicts bodily forms and internal anatomy that symbolize disease, illness, and family relationships. Both baking and human bodies are held to ideals of precision and perfection. The grotesque elements in my work relate to the decay, pain, and the bodily betrayal of the human form over time. I use screen-printing on napkins and cards to explore precious and ephemeral celebratory artifacts. Humor mixed with horror is my way of confronting fears about lost memories, growing up and apart, and our fleeting and fading family time together.
