My current body of work consists of three mixed media paintings that use the jester to look at the emotional labor inside performance. I’m drawn to this figure because it lives in that strange space between honesty and entertainment. A jester can say what others cannot, but only if they keep the crowd happy. That balance feels familiar to me. It mirrors the pressure to stay composed or light even when the internal reality is heavier. The jester gives me a way to talk about what it feels like to be watched and expected to hold everything together.

This series comes directly from my own history with performance and public facing creative work. Years of dancing, creating content, and navigating visibility have shaped how I understand endurance, embodiment, trust, and how people move in this world. Being watched teaches you how to keep going, how to smile through exhaustion, and how to manage the expectations placed on you. Those habits stay in the body. They show up in the way I build these paintings and in how I understand identity as something shaped by repetition, pressure, and the need to keep going even when you’re tired of being seen.

The materials carry their own weight, and the way they sit on the canvas mirrors the layered, stitched together feeling of performing a version of yourself. The fabrics wrinkle, pull, and fray. The paint builds up to create texture. Nothing sits perfectly flat, which feels honest to what I’m trying to show.

I want viewers to feel the strain behind the spectacle and to think about the expectations they carry in their own lives. These paintings come from my experience with performance, movement, costume, and the repetition of showing up. The jester becomes a way to talk about visibility, humor, and the quiet exhaustion underneath both. For me, the work is not about comedy. It is about the emotional cost of being seen.