MISERY ISLAND

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Misery Island is an ongoing series of paintings and ceramics about American domestic life and the quiet systems that shape it. The work looks at how care, discipline, and control are built into everyday spaces, objects, and rituals, often without being named. The paintings focus on interiors, maritime imagery, and folk ornament rather than personal narrative. Quilts, wreaths, furniture, and repeated patterns take the place of characters or stories, suggesting inherited rules about how to belong, behave, and endure. Human presence is often reduced or absent, allowing objects and arrangements to carry emotional and psychological weight. The imagery draws from American folk traditions and New England maritime culture, where usefulness and decoration often overlap. These references are used to explore how intimacy and restraint coexist, and how comfort can quietly become pressure. Misery Island is not a literal place. It describes a state of being shaped by inherited structures, where care and control exist at the same time, and meaning is carried by form rather than confession.