Stormy Monday

2026

16 x 20" framed

Oil on Canvas

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. 

This is from my "Midwestern Nice" series, which depicts near-past nostalgia and sensory memories of rural and suburban Midwest experiences.

This painting ships framed.