80's Child Is Full of Woe

80's Child Is Full of Woe

The first thing that arrived was the color. Without intending to, I found myself returning again and again to the saturated hues of my childhood—colors that echoed Strawberry Shortcake, Rainbow Brite, Superman, My Little Pony, Care Bears, Saturday mornings, Reading Rainbow, and a world that once felt impossibly bright.

As the work emerged, I realized I wasn't painting the 1980s. I was painting what it felt like to remember them.

This collection explores the strange relationship between memory and emotion. Childhood is often remembered through fragments—favorite toys, television characters, the fibers of your living room carpet, colors that seem permanently imprinted somewhere deep inside us.

The paintings and woven works share the same language of layering. Pigment, thread, texture, and time intertwine much like memory itself—revealing, obscuring, and reconstructing the stories we carry.

The title, 80's Child Is Full of Woe, borrows from the familiar nursery rhyme, creating a tension between what is seen and what is felt. The work is bright, playful, and saturated with the visual optimism of an era, while acknowledging that childhood is rarely experienced as a single emotion. Joy and loneliness, wonder and uncertainty, delight and longing often occupy the same memory.

This collection isn't an exercise in nostalgia.

It's an invitation to remember the child beneath the colors.