The studio.
My interest in issues around the history of race stem directly from early years in a middle class, white suburb of Sacramento California. From a young age, I was able to observe, quite clearly, that being viewed as white was a special kind of existence. The way that my white classmates and teachers treated me versus the callous way they treated my darker skinned friends was extreme. Once it became known that I had formed friendships with children from the other neighborhoods, I noticed how invitations to birthday parties, sleepovers, and bike rides, from the white “friends” in my neighborhood slowly diminished. On more than one occasion, teachers sent me home with notes of “concern” regarding how much time I was spending at recess playing with the children from the urban areas. As a child, I didn’t have the knowledge to decipher all the coded language around skin color, but I knew internally that something was wrong. This observation stayed with me and evolved as I grew older.
My current body of work aims is to examine the construct of race from two vantage points. One aspect falls loosely into the category of history painting. For example, the painting titled “We Did Not Exist Before 1681” questions how the term white first appeared in early 17th century Colonial Maryland. The second aspect investigates the many ways race has affected my family. The painting titled “Undesirable, Swarthy Swede in 1817: Proud White Southerner in 1860” asks what was lost when my father’s side of the family morphed from being not the right kind of white in 1817, to fighting proudly for the Confederacy in a single generation. I also examine how that shift created a schism between the many sides of my family, particularly the Native American side, who were not considered white. Finally I scrutinize how being viewed as white has affected my personal outlook on the world.