The Patient Looks Back: Portraits of My Therapist
A solo exhibition at the James W. Palmer III Gallery, Vassar College
September 17–October 10, 2026
Opening reception
Thursday, September 24, 5–7 p.m.
Artist talk
Saturday, October 3, 4–5 p.m.
College Center, Vassar College
124 Raymond Avenue, Poughkeepsie, New York
The exhibition, reception, and artist talk are free and open to the public. No reservations are required.
Cheap Monday - oil on canvas, 2025, 30 x 40 in.
Gray - oil on canvas, 2025, 36 x 36 in.
Another Blue Sweater - oil on canvas, 2026, 30 x 40 in.
Another Blue Sweater detail
Pink Plaid - oil on canvas, 2025, 40 x 30 in.
Teal - oil on canvas, 2026, 40 x 30 in.
Colorblock - oil on canvas, 2024, 72 x 48 in.
The Patient Looks Back is a series of oil paintings of my therapist, developed over several years and made entirely with my fingers.
Working from photographs taken during our monthly sessions, I press, layer, and partially remove paint while it is still wet. Color is mixed directly on the surface. The scale of the marks corresponds to my fingers, so contact remains visible and cannot be fully controlled.
Each painting returns to the same figure. My therapist’s role is to observe while remaining composed and partially opaque. In these paintings, that condition is reversed. I am the one looking closely, repeatedly.
Likeness does not resolve the image; it increases the pressure within it. The surface holds that pressure—built through contact, erosion, and reworking—so that forms emerge and destabilize at the same time.
Across the series, recognition never fully settles. The figure remains present, but not fully knowable.
From a series of 18 paintings, 2023–2026