These paintings are about what people do to themselves in order to survive. The work lives inside the shame that was handed to you before you could refuse it. Specifically the psychological architecture people build to make that panic livable. The censor bar is both weapon and shelter. It destroys what it hides. It also makes it possible to exist in rooms that feel unsafe.

This work is not only about who you are or who you love, but about the violence of convincing yourself it doesn't matter, and what that private, daily act of self-erasure costs. It is about how that same mechanism, scaled outward, explains so much of the aggression and hypocrisy by those who cannot face themselves. The aggression is recognition. The panic is proximity.

Built with a palette knife, the beauty and the damage come from the same hand, the same motion. The most honest part is in the near-match cover-ups. You can see the lie and how hard it works. The flowers survive underneath, the bar remains for now. Never mind.

Never mind,

Never mind, I don't know - 24x36

Oil, acrylic and aerosol on canvas