I explore human experience by portraying bodies in my immediate environment. My painting employs both figurative representation and abstraction as means of revisiting and coping with personal history, trauma, collective memory and identity. By painting the way my body feels from the inside, I illustrate an internal world. Drawing on my background as a modern dancer and biochemist, I question representations of self, others, and beauty. Focusing on enlarged portraits, fragmented bodies, and abstractions of isolated body parts, I capture human expressions and gestures. I use the prolific historical theme of the female nude and subvert it by portraying large figures that escape the picture frame. The image surfaces vary from thick paint to washy passages or even bare canvas. My goal is to empower women and explore the afterlife of images. To paraphrase the art historian Aby Warburg, images have lives and a fluidity with which they migrate and cross both temporal and geographical lines. Through my work, I seek this fluidity of meaning.