The Bible teaches that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. What are the consequences of constant surveillance enacted by both this unseen force and the physical presence of the Church? Faithfulness is a woman waiting to be struck down by a tree branch because she ran in her sports bra with no t-shirt on beneath the July sun. Repentance is the internal self-flagellation performed to suppress thoughts asking “Am I really so wicked? Is life meant to feel this perilous?” 

My recent work houses feelings about my experiences as a woman beneath the strict gaze of the church. My research centers around the teachings of the Southern Baptist Church and the lines that blur between superstition in the Bible Belt and the secularity of the regional culture. Through allegorical figures painted with a frenetic hand, I alchemize memories to communicate the severity of the Calvinist theology I was taught and to perform reparative self-care. Using a lexicon of symbols tied to personal history, like jean shorts and magnolias, I place these figures in a dripping, neon and blood-soaked interpretation of the southern landscape I grew up in. The figures are tormented, plagued by anxiety wrought by the potential of their eternal damnation. They commit small acts of rebellion, and experience spiritual awakening,  all while learning to exist in community together. The female body is a witness, subject, and enactor of violence, mirroring the landscape as they both hold messages of discipline and desire. The figures in my work care for each other through the casual apocalypse advertised on interstate billboards stating “JESUS SAVES” that are followed by ads for liquor stores and “STRIPPERS, NEED WE SAY MORE?” My work is both an act of defiance against the theology instilled in me and a counter narrative, exploring accessibility to the divine and notions of community amongst the exiled.