I began painting young women based on imagery found in popular culture, primarily fashion magazines. I was initially attracted to the small dramas depicted in these staged scenes and gradually saw them as metaphors for certain themes in my work, such as: girl as motif, loss, melancholy, pleasure, and nostalgic and romantic images of childhood and love. In my work this imagery is filtered through my (feminine and maternal) point of view and experience as a parent of girls.

The themes of my current work are the sometimes awkward and self-aware consciousness of teenage girls and young women: their struggle for self-possession and individuality; the dualities of female consciousness, such as conformity and self-expression, self-revelation and concealment and the expressive and self-preservationist functions of fashion and other signifiers of identity. By locating the protagonists in private and personal spaces, and by combining candid and “staged” moments in the structure of my paintings, the work attempts to probe the heavily mediated cultural experience of girls.

• The New Drawing Room