Dress / Undress
What if adornment is the first creative instinct?
Across cultures and throughout history, humans have decorated their bodies.
Clothing.
Jewelry.
Textiles.
Objects chosen not only for protection, but for expression.
Dressing is one of the earliest creative acts many of us experience.
Long before we call it art, we experiment with materials — dressing dolls, selecting clothing, discovering how texture, color, and form change how we feel.
Dress / Undress begins with this instinct.
Through mixed media dress forms and layered materials, the work explores adornment as a creative impulse — one that moves between play, identity, concealment, and revelation.
Dress / Undress began with a simple impulse.
I wanted to paint dresses.
The first painting emerged playfully, through layered paper, mother-of-pearl, and gold and silver leaf. As the series developed, materials multiplied, including plant material and textiles, it started opening a larger set of questions about dressing itself — why we adorn the body, how clothing shapes identity, and what creative instincts live.
As the series develops, the governing logic of this work is still emerging. At present, three elements have begun shaping the investigation, and questions are still surfacing.
Clothing itself is a form of adornment. The act of dressing is the act of adorning.
Dresses in particular carry identity, ceremony, beauty, and cultural meaning.
In these paintings, layered paper, mother-of-pearl, and reflective materials begin behaving like textiles and jewelry placed onto the body.
While working on the first piece, I noticed something unexpected. Placing fragments of mother-of-pearl onto the painted dress felt similar to placing a necklace onto my own body. I was adorning the image.
The act of painting the dress had become an act of dressing it.
Adornment is one of the earliest instinctive creative acts many people experience.
Children dress dolls. Experiment with clothing. Play dress-up.
Over time that instinct often becomes self-conscious. The freedom to experiment gives way to questions about how we appear and how we are perceived.
Part of this investigation asks what happens when that instinct is approached again with the same openness — whether a playful creative impulse can be rediscovered through dressing an inanimate painted figure, or simply by giving ourselves permission to play again.
While working on the second dress painting, another set of questions began to surface.
After several iterations, I layered thick mulberry and fibrous papers across the surface of the dress form. The material felt almost like heavy textile — dense, tactile, and layered — with fragments of gold and shell still visible beneath. At moments the form seemed almost caught within the fibers.
That sensation led to a deeper question about the symbolism of dresses themselves. Are dresses restrictive? Or do they offer a different kind of agency?
A dress allows the body to be both concealed and revealed — sometimes within the same gesture. Throughout history, garments have been used to control what is visible and what remains hidden. Women have sewn jewels into clothing, hiding their only private wealth from capture.
Through that lens, dressing and undressing becomes an act of authorship — a decision about what is shared and what remains private.
The investigation is unfolding through a series of 20 x 30 paintings, of which three are complete.
First, A Dress
Fragments of mother-of-pearl and small pieces of paper were layered onto the painted form, introducing texture, pattern, and a soft reflective shine across the surface. The patterns within the variegated metal leaf and marbled dyed silver leaf began to resemble textiles — closer to fabric or quilting than traditional painting.
Working with those materials shifted the process in an unexpected way. Instead of painting an image of a dress, I began to feel more like a designer assembling a garment. Placing pearl onto the painted surface felt similar to fastening jewelry onto a body.
A Second Dress
The second dress painting went through several iterations before settling into its current form.
Layering thick, fibrous mulberry paper over areas of gold leaf, the dress figure began to feel concealed — the material dense and tactile, with fragments of reflective surface still visible beneath. The process revealed something about how a dress can both reveal and conceal, be expressive or constrictive, depending entirely on the wearer's choice.
The Heart of The Matter
The Heart of the Matter is a gestural piece built through heavy oil stick covering the surface, alongside embroidered cotton textile, paper, black gesso, and embedded paper doll cutouts.
This work continues the conceal/reveal pattern that keeps emerging throughout this investigation into dresses. The paper doll dresses are tightly shaped around the waist, emphasizing the bust and curves. The skin is concealed, but the shape is revealed. I keep returning to the question: is that part of our power?
There is a wild energy in the piece, especially in the frantic oil stick mark-making as it rubs across the textured surface, but there is also a constrained energy and a discomfort underneath it. The mismatch of materials contributes to that tension — heavily textured cotton against flat graphic paper dolls, layered textured papers against a flat panel surface, and the delicate lunaria seed pods embedded throughout.
As I spent time with the piece, repeating vesica piscis shapes began appearing unintentionally. I see them in the lunaria, in the embroidered patterns, and in forms that emerge in the upper half of the work, where shapes could be read as the bust of a dress. One shape appears in white and settled gold within the fibers, another through the embroidery itself. Small openings edged in red suggest additional portals or thresholds within the surface.
The piece circles around a continuing question in this body of work: where does feminine power reside, and how do we make peace with what we have been given as women?
dress no. 4
Dress No. 4 continues the investigation through material before image.
The base is gold leaf and dyed silver leaf, laid down in circular shapes that leave a soft imprint on the surface. Over that, strips of transparent silk chiffon — some stained with color, others remaining white — partially mute the reflective ground. The transparency creates a shifting tension between what is visible and what is obscured.
As the work developed, strips of chiffon began coming away from the surface. Rather than resisting this, I pulled them off, worked into what was underneath, and began to see something else emerging. The piece became interactive in my hands before it became interactive in concept — an invitation to lift the gauzy layers and discover what lies beneath.
The circles in the gold leaf, the strips of translucent fabric, the question of what is concealed and what is revealed — all of it began suggesting tights, stockings, the way fabric simultaneously covers and draws attention to the body beneath it.
There may be something here about bypassing self-judgment — about the natural human instinct to want to lift a layer and see what's underneath, before the thinking mind decides whether that's allowed.
Still unfolding.
From Surface to Space
As the series develops, a larger spatial environment is coming into focus.
The installation unfolds as a progression through rooms. Visitors begin among the paintings — the surfaces where the investigation first took shape. From there, the work expands into larger rooms where dress forms appear at life scale, functioning less as images and more as presences within the space.
In the final rooms the experience becomes participatory. Visitors may place materials onto the painted figures — rearranging, experimenting, dressing and undressing the forms. A dress-up box sits nearby. An invitation to play.
The paintings are helping me understand how this environment might function materially, spatially, and socially. Many questions are still unfolding. The work is developing in real time as each new dress clarifies what the installation might become.
Visitors may place materials onto the painted figures — rearranging elements, experimenting with combinations, dressing and undressing the forms much like like size paper dolls. A dress-up box sits nearby.
An invitation to play.
The paintings are helping me understand how this environment might function materially, spatially, and socially.
Many questions are still unfolding.
The work is developing in real time as each new dress helps clarify what the installation might become.
Participation
For Collectors
Collectors interested in acquiring available works from these investigations are welcome to inquire.
FOR CURATORS, INSTITUTIONS, AND COLLABORATING ARTISTS
These investigations are evolving toward large-scale installation environments.