“To Be or Not to Be, Girlfriend” / Oil on linen / 52” x 73” / 2023

“To Be or Not to Be, Girlfriend” is an inquiry into what happens when our dreams and desires end up actualized yet hollow. The painting was inspired by spending time with the subject, who at age 39 decided to wake up every day at 5am and go to culinary school. On the left is the idealized housewife she has embodied for the last decade: a fashionable and affluent woman-about-town, devoted spouse, doting mother. But at what point do those roles crowd out a deeper affirming sense of self? On the right is a voice in her head, visiting like the Ghost in Hamlet – outsized, ethereal – telling her that all is not right; she must act; she must recover her individuality. In making the painting large-scale, the viewer can take the perspective of her child seated at the table - loving my mother, wanting my dinner and planning my future. Social roles do not magically disappear. The clock in the cupboard ticks. Red permeates the painting, an undercurrent of rage and suppressed desire. Uneasy brushstrokes sit together like vapor, ready to condense or dissipate – her story unfinished; the resolution uncertain.