Artist's Statement

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Society puts immense pressure on women from an early age; social expectations and the media make anything less than perfect distasteful.  As a result, women hide many aspects of themselves from the world.  Mental illness, mistakes, insecurities - there are a myriad of emotions and experiences women keep in the recesses of their minds to store the “undesirable” aspects and memories of themselves. 

 

But these secrets don’t go away.  They live - very much alive - in the psyche, and as much as women would love to escape them and set them free - they cannot.  The secrets are safe from outside judgment, but they linger to torment the women who carry them.  

 

In A Woman’s Burden, I present the “everywoman,” who experiences, copes, and grapples with the undesirable emotions and experiences she feels compelled to keep hidden from public view.  I delve into the stories that play on a constant loop in a woman’s mind and explore what they look like, how they make women feel, and how women interact with the feelings and emotions hidden there.  It’s a silent performance between the woman and the secret. 

 

Throughout this series of linguistic, fine-art images, I encourage my audience to reflect on these pressures and expectations, and why women choose to hide them from others.  They are also invited to go further.  What do these secrets do to females?  What are their long-term impacts?  How can we help women move past them?