Cellblock One, 2022

These studies of vintage mugshots started over the Covid lockdowns. For years, I’d been collecting some vintage police photos of incarcerated women that I thought were touching and intriguing. After researching the photos I became invested in their stories and incorporated many of these narratives into the pieces. In most of the police photos, their faces looked like melting candles and rotten fruit, reminding me of figures by Otto Dix and Kees Van Dongen. The first few paintings I finished were loosely inspired by real mugshots. As the series progressed, I started developing my own characters. I hadn’t intended this to be a full series, but eventually it became one female mugshot for every decade of the 20th century.