Remnants of The Abject in this ongoing body of work I reference rape culture, feminine constructs of beauty and conformity. I degrade pink (tender associations: “gentle” “submissive” “ladylike”) with aggressive brushstrokes and slick, dripping paint, scraping entire paintings down and reworking them into abstracted stories, palimpsets of fishnet stockings, beads, and pantyhose amid obfuscated genitals, eyes, toothy smiles and juicy lips; heavy-handed marks of oil, acrylic, spray paint, glitter; scrawled text offering suggestions on how a woman “should” comport herself. The visual enigma of the female subject emerges from remembered experiences of violence, physical pain, and the struggle for calm. The surface becomes the skin, but the message is clear: look, but don’t touch. My complex visual vocabulary embraces free use of color, with pink in all its shades, a motif across multiple works, building a distinctly ‘non-pink’ view of the feminine experience. I identify with the the concept of maximalism: to be “putting everything into her painting.” this personal language-building through “everything in and nothing left to lose,” whether it be different materials, colors, use of tools, or my own emotional investment.