Portraits imagined. Stories assembled. Worlds made tangible.
Some women refuse to remain inside the frame.
The Reliquary is a collection of original mixed-media works built around imagined women, each with a presence, a history, and a world that seems to reveal itself as the piece takes shape.
The portraits begin as AI-assisted imagery, a way of giving form to characters I can see clearly in my mind but cannot draw by hand. From there, the digital gives way to the physical.
Images are printed on canvas, torn, layered and mounted by hand. Lace may creep across an edge. Pearls disappear beneath fabric. Dried flowers, aged papers, wallpaper, ribbon and unexpected found objects become fragments of a story that was never written but somehow feels as though it already existed.
Some pieces lean into the faded romance of Victorian Gothic. Others will venture into more mechanical worlds of gears, keys, pocket watches, embossed leather, vellum invention drawings and beautifully improbable machinery. The materials change because the women do.
Occasionally, the canvas isn't a canvas at all. A vintage-style train case, box or other found object may become part of the work when the story demands somewhere more interesting to live.
No two pieces are intended to follow the same recipe. Each begins with a face and evolves through texture, instinct and whatever curious little thing seems to belong there.
Not quite portrait. Not quite artifact. Something found between the two.
