Eyes -

Pensive Women Series
The “Pensive Women” series came about because I am curious about the interior landscapes that people retreat to – distanced from or unaware of observers, even as they are in public view.   With body language and with distant gazes, they signal that they are absent, unavailable, or “lost in thought”.   This same introspective expression is often evident in portraits of women throughout the centuries.  What are they thinking and feeling?

 Because we believe that there is a universality of certain core experiences for women that lead to introspection (disappointment, loneliness, sorrow, fear, for example), we imagine that we understand their expressions and the undercurrent of their unexpressed emotions.

Without generational and cultural context, we cannot truly know what draws their gaze away.  The #MeToo movement has brought this incomplete understanding into sharp relief.  Without being inculcated in the pervasive behaviors and attitudes that define each generation’s expectations and outcomes, we cannot truly know the secret places that she escapes to when we see her “lost in thought”.    Slowly, however, our gazes are being brought into the present as old ideas and behaviors are being questioned. 

The triptych oil paintings are details taken from oil paintings that span a 400-year period.    

“Catherine of Aragon”,  Michael Sittow. 1502
“Portrait of a Lady”, Antoine Plamondon, 1826
”The Blue Kimono," Lilla Cabot Perry, 1915