Darling

Darling is a series of paintings exploring the female body as a site of contradiction — simultaneously ornamental and dangerous, cultivated and resistant. A feminine monster of sort.

The figures in these works are built from carnivorous and toxic botanicals: Venus flytraps, pitcher plants, sundews, and poisonous medicinal herbs. The female form has long been shaped by external forces — trained toward beauty, softness, and passivity. These paintings ask what happens when that form starts growing teeth.

Carnivorous plants operate through deception. They are attractive by necessity — color, shape, and scent evolved not for beauty's sake but to draw something close enough to consume. Feminine allure, socially enforced and aesthetically refined, shares that same tension between invitation and self-protection.

The works don't offer resolution. The figures are neither victims nor predators in any clean sense. They are organisms adapting — developing the tools available to them within the conditions they were given.