Standing on the stage under hot lights, music booming, wearing her 8-inch stilettos, a girl turns ger back to the audience, bends to touch the floor with her fingers, and looks through her legs at the people seated around the stage. It was at that moment that I knew I would create this collection. Amongst the sea of men all dressed in warm comfortable clothes, I could see all these women (this dancer's co-workers) in tiny cold uncomfortable (thus sexy) attire, and I thought "these men have no idea how truly beautiful these women really are." They can see how lovely they are to look at, but they do not know that this woman they are talking to has an amazing little girl at home waiting for her to read her a story, and that that is all that woman is really thinking about. Or, that she is thinking about her homework, or her utility bill, or her lover. They don't know how funny she in the dressing room, or that when she is stressed out she cleans that room just like she would at home. They don't know that she is worried about her brother, her mother, or her pet. When they see these women outside the context of the club, in thier regular jeans and tennis shoes, at a restaurant or a store, they often seem genuinely shocked that dancers exist in the sunlight, or put gas in their cars, or eat eggs. There is just so much more to these women than people inside and outside of the clubs they work at are willing to give them credit for, and as I stood there watching them dance and work the floor, through the smoke and the lights and the crowd, I just knew that I wanted other people to see these women like I did.

So! Read each of these pieces like they are their own story, because that is what they are. Every part of each girl's painting can tell you something about her. If she has a Florida sweatshirt on in one of her pictures, she is from Florida. IF there is an animal, a predominant color, a sports logo, that is her pet, her favorite color, the team she loves to root for.

Because working in the sex industry is really the most historical of female jobs, I painted each girl on a page of an Amish newspaper. I felt like between the spectrums of the two, all aspects of what society expects of women, and of the roles these women ultimately play, are covered. No person is only one thing. No person is only a stripper, any more than they are only a mother or secretary, or waitress. And yet this one job title seems to be very hard for people to see past. I hope this collection provides a more inclusive view into these women and this part of the world.

Unstripped