About me

Threads of Life Series
When I first pushed a needle through the cold wax surface of a painting I’d considered finished, something shifted. The resistance of the hardened medium, the small puncture wound the needle left, the way the thread created a visible scar across the composition—it felt true in a way the painting alone had not.

I build layered paintings on canvas using oils and cold wax medium, often incorporating gold leaf, tissue paper, and graphite marks. The color palette leans toward the vibrant and sensory: delicious alizarin crimson, violent crimson, soft lake blues, lemon-tasting yellows, Indian yellow, gold hues, cool whites. The surfaces accumulate slowly—scraped back, built up again, allowing earlier layers to show through like memory surfacing. Some paintings feature clear, recognizable figurative elements; others remain purely abstract explorations of color and form.

Once the wax has cured hard enough to pierce, I thread a needle with embroidery floss in vivid rainbow hues and begin stitching directly through the painted surface. The stitching takes weeks. Each pass of the needle requires force to penetrate the wax-stiffened canvas. The thread colors—more vibrant than the paint beneath—become unmistakably visible, elevated in three dimensions above the surface, casting shadows and creating physical relief.

I work without a predetermined pattern, letting the thread respond to what the painting needs. Sometimes I create organic tufts, stitching and cutting the thread to form bristles that rise from the surface. Other times I build round, densely stitched areas that create texture and weight. The thread might travel in taut lines between distant points, pool in concentrated bursts, or trace delicate pathways that barely whisper across the canvas.
These stitched interventions transform the painting into something beyond flat surface.

The thread physically binds separate painted elements into relationship. It creates visible networks—tributaries of color connecting fragmented areas, repair made tangible. Where paint speaks in washes and layers, thread speaks in line and dimension and the evidence of labor.

This process emerged from learning about neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to create new pathways around damaged areas after trauma. The stitching became a physical analog for that rewiring: visible evidence of repair, connection formed through repetition and intention. The thread doesn’t erase what’s beneath; it creates alternate routes through the terrain. It honors both the wound and the healing.

Each piece takes months to complete, which feels right. The slow accumulation of stitches mirrors the slow work of emotional integration. There are no shortcuts. The physical resistance of pushing needle through wax echoes the resistance we meet when trying to change old patterns. But persistence creates passage. Eventually, a new pathway exists where none did before.

Viewers often see different networks in the thread. Some notice family systems and how we’re connected to those who formed us. Others recognize maps of their own emotional architecture—where they’ve been broken, where they’ve created bridges. Several people have mentioned the tension between the chaos of feeling and the deliberate choice to stitch through it anyway.

The work asks: What connects us to ourselves? What threads still hold when others have broken? How do we create new connections when old ones fail us? The paintings don’t answer these questions—they make them visible.

I make this work because painting alone couldn’t say what I needed to say about repair. The stitching makes invisible processes tangible—connection, integration, the slow labor of healing. When someone stands before one of these paintings and sees their own story reflected back, when they recognize the network of their own resilience, that’s when the work completes itself.