In my current body of work, I am exploring the pressures of feminine beauty standards and the effect that they have on society. By juxtaposing modern pop culture references such as Disney, fairy tales, and dating apps with stylizations of the 18th century French Rocco era and historical details, I play on the ideas of old and new in a lighthearted and sometimes comical way.

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Fairy tales are among some of the first stories children learn in many cultures. As a young girl, I strived to look and act just like the Disney princesses on the screen, but the dainty figures and beautiful faces always felt unattainable. The abundance of identically skinny Disney princesses and other female heroines replaces everyday beauty with manufactured ideals: extremely pale skin tones, small waists, delicate limbs, and full breasts. As they mature, impressionable children idolize these impossibly ideal protagonists and often become young women who perpetuate and buy into the idea that thin is the only acceptable form of beauty.

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As a lover of history, I am intrigued by the combination of traditional painting aspects mixed with contemporary imagery. Rococo painting is characterized by soft colors and curvy lines and depicts scenes of love, nature, amorous encounters, light-hearted entertainment, and the feminine youth.

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Many artists and art historians find Rococo art to be low art, but to me, it embodies the ideas of sensuality and desire in a way that fits nicely into my own painting concepts. By inserting modern portraits into the archival stylizations. I aim to create new narratives that speak to both historical and contemporary issues.