Midwestern Nice

5/29/20262 min read

(This painting depicts a young women in a blue, striped, cotton dress wrestling with a billowing sheet on a laundry line as the sky darkens around her. Other folks from the Midwest have told me they know just what this feels like - it's in the light. The sun is bright on one side, but you can see a corner of the sky behind the cottage that is purple with incoming weather.)

This painting is the first in the "Midwestern Nice" series. I was looking through my books on Waterhouse and Bouguereau and thinking about what to paint. Though I love their depictions and compositions, I felt like women in togas and mythological scenes were not a good fit for me. Then it occurred to me - they didn't live with women in togas either. It was simply an aesthetic. Which is something I could do too.

That's what inspired this group of works - I asked myself "what am I really about" and "how do I want that to feel." Somehow those two questions unlocked a cascade of images from my childhood and my life with my daughters... things like doing chores, playing in the sun, and simmering through summers that seemed like they'd never end.

What am I really about - I am a Midwestern lady. I grew up in the 70s, which means I was a latchkey kid with a bicycle and very little supervision. We played in the woods, scavenged coins in couch cushions for penny candy, and wore the same tennis shoes until our toes poked through. Then I had my daughters and their lives were kind of similar - we did chores, made crafts, watched movies and read books in thousands-pages-series.

So though the topics are familiar, the aesthetic was the last piece. I want each piece to feel iconic, so I've been working on idealized garments - borrowed trousers, rolled-sleeve cotton shirts, billowy skirts. Tomboy utility (but attractive, of course). Sometimes tonalist, sometimes as bright as a summer afternoon or as turquoise as dusk. Whatever the painting needs to be.

I'm letting go of a bit of realism here in favor of a synaesthetic reality. I've been thinking that realism locks the door on some kinds of interactions... I'll write more on that when I've got it properly sussed. Suffice it to say that this series will be looser and juicier than I've gone before.

In a nutshell, "Stormy Monday" is the first of my Midwestern Nice" series, which depicts near-past nostalgia and sensory memories of rural and suburban Midwest experiences.

I hope you enjoy this with me. let me know your thoughts! I'd love to hear them.