In the spring of 2024 I created this collection of paintings while processing the grief of losing Ibby Rivers, a friend I had been getting to know over a few seasons. Ibby was a swimmer, hedonist, poet, fellow Gemini Moon, a total sensation in a jumpsuit. Then, suddenly, gone.

I consider this body of work my 'grief paintings.' Returning to them layer upon layer provided relief that shifted between cathartic to meditative, following wherever the grief led.

This work became a conceptual continuation of former paintings dealing with the temporality of the body. In those works, Nodules and Drift, I considered the physical experience through my lens of disability and autoimmune diseases, contemplating the slow deterioration of physical form. In my attempts to make sense of the sudden death of someone seemingly perfectly healthy, the same age I would turn that summer, I abstracted systems or conditions of the heart that might lead to such unexpected failure. Abstraction acted as a balm for what I could never know.

Ibby's poetry, particularly I Will Always Count the Windows, below, inspired this series. Creating work anchored in their words introduced my exploration of meaning-making between visual and written forms of expression, leading to the works found in Drawings & Words as well as the Wax & Wane: 8 Spells Collection.

Click on the images below to further explore details of each piece.