REMNANT SERIES: 2018

These mixed media pieces are made from dried acrylic paint that has been scraped off of my palette, saved for over a decade, and cast in epoxy resin.

As a teenager, my best friend Heather and I often gossiped in the garage, near my easel and paints and out of ear shot of any parents. I remember her peeling the dried acrylic paint off my palette one time as we sat there and chatted. After she died unexpectedly in 2007, I started peeling the dried paint off of my palette because it reminded me of her. I thought of Heather often when I painted, and scraping the paint to reveal a clean white palette was both satisfying and calming. Cleaning my palette at the start of each day unconsciously became part of my studio routine. It still is today.

Some of the fragments of leftover paint were stunning - too beautiful to put in the trash. I started saving them in clear boxes, each day scraping and layering the new pieces on top of the old. The boxes filled up quickly. After a year, I saw miniature versions of my paintings: 365 days of work and emotion and happiness and sadness and everything in between all neatly condensed and layered in a box.

It took me over a decade to figure out what to do with these leftover remnants and over a week to sort.the pieces by color. The composition is intentional, each paint chip precisely placed on all sides, including the back. I see these artworks as painting-sculpture hybrids that can be hung on a wall (like a painting) or displayed on a shelf or flat like a sculpture. The dried acrylic paint is fragile but transformed and nearly indestructible when cast in resin. Like my mirror paintings and gold leaf series, the square format of each pice references social media and our familiarity of seeing pictures this way.