Artist Statement:

Over the past five years, my life shifted. I stepped away from retail management and the daily rhythms of motherhood and entered a period of reflection and self-definition. I returned to painting as a way of processing without language—using the canvas to ask who I had been, who I was becoming, and how I arrived here. Along the way, quiet questions kept surfaced: Did Nan feel this way? Is this how Mom got through?

Those questions became the foundation of this body of work. Through my Nan, Grama, Mom, and other women in my family, I sit with lives shaped by duty, resilience, and largely unspoken strength. They moved through outwardly masculine worlds while carrying the weight of traditionally female roles—raising families, maintaining homes, and sustaining work that often went unseen. Their uncertainties were rarely voiced, yet their guidance left a lasting mark. The parallels between their lives and my own form a generational echo that continues to shape how I move through the world.

This work exists in the space between societal expectation and personal authenticity. It honours both the sacrifices and the strengths passed down through generations, acknowledging how the roles women held continue to shape female identity today. What was inherited is not only obligation, but also endurance, intuition, and resolve.

Visually, the paintings draw from analogue collage and surrealist imagery. Symbolic elements are layered to mirror the way memory and identity overlap. Flowers represent five women across generations; rings reference heirlooms now in my care; geometric forms point to the rules and structures that define our lives, now serving as points of navigation. Painted in bold colour using oil on wood panels or heavy paper, the materials speak to lineage, rootedness, and foundation.

Ultimately, this work traces the trails the women before us left behind—honouring what has been carried forward, while making space for new footprints to emerge.