Chess Girls

36” x 48” Oil and collaged paper on canvas

After months of painting dirty dishes, trash, and half-eaten food, I was craving portraiture and figuration. My still lifes felt incomplete—missing the people who might have been behind those everyday scenes. Chess Girls was born from that need to bring human presence into the story.

This painting captures two of my classmates on the first sunny day of the year, caught outside skipping studio time to draw and play games in the sunlight. I like to think it honors their influence on my work and the shared experience of those moments.

By adding their figures, this piece connects the domestic clutter of my still lifes to the real lives and relationships that surround and shape those scenes.