During the fall of 2021 while reading and researching for a color theory class I was teaching and for Transart Intensives I attended, I was inspired with the concept for my current series "Color Coded." My palette references “scientifically generated” skin-tone charts, “The Fitzpatrick Skin Type Scale”, used since the 1970s to determine SPF levels required to prevent sunburn, by its predecessor the “Von Luschan scale”, developed as a method for classifying ethnic populations via skin color and "racial classifications", and also by a myriad of "beauty" products promotional color charts.
My own skin tone lines up with the middle shade of all of the aforementioned charts, very closely matching the “olive” labeled one. Hence, variations of "olive" tones dominate my "Color Coded" under-paintings. In regards to having olive-toned skin, throughout my life I have been socially and psychologically conditioned to understand myself via my inherited Mediterranean ethnicities, as white, or at least as assimilated white...simultaneously I am subconsciously aware that I am non-anglo, non-brown, non-black person. Consequently I occupy a kind of in-between racial space, on the edge of racial constructs, in a sort of racial schism.
This coupled with my inhabiting a cis-female, feminine body within a society that engages in the glorification of anglo or pale, light skin-toned male or masculine bodies, powerfully impacts my lived experiences. In terms of sexism, like all females/feminines, I encounter it as a matter of course. And because most of my awareness, that is my feelings and thoughts about my ethnicity, race, gender and sexuality is internal, subtle and abstract, my creative expressions regarding my identity markers, that is my studio work, is also abstract.
