Feminine Gaze is my ongoing exploration of the increasingly contested question: what is a woman? As debates attempt to reduce womanhood to anatomy, roles, or expectations, this body of work examines the lived realities that such definitions ignore - the trials, contradictions, and dangers women navigate daily.

The series serves as a visual dialogue confronting both the active and passive violence directed at women in the United States, where violations often carry little consequence and autonomy over one’s body continues to erode within law and social norms. My paintings address the personal and collective experience of inhabiting a body that is continually claimed by others - by a partner, an aggressor, a government, a god.

Though “femininity” is often associated with softness, pastel palettes, or delicacy, for many women it also means walking to the car with keys between their fingers, covering a drink at a party, or gauging whether it is safe enough to say no - and being condemned when it isn’t. It means watching state lines determine access to necessary healthcare. The definition of “feminine” is vast, paradoxical, and fraught: to be confident yet reserved, guarded yet approachable, everything and nothing at once.

The female experience is one of persistent caution. While resilience is admirable, my work argues that it should not be a prerequisite for moving through the world. Through this series, I aim to render visible the emotional and physical realities of femininity - its vulnerability, its strength, its contradictions - and to challenge the forces that continue to shape, confine, and endanger it.