In honor of Expo Chicago 2025, I’m doing something different with my homepage and digging into my archives to present four works that reveal a more intimate side of me. These pieces showcase who I am as an individual, something I don’t often share with my usual work.

Coincidentally, I created this painting at a time where I was grieving many things in my life, my childhood, motherhood, myself, many many things kept flooding me in waves.

I did not intend for this to be a crying painting. The dripping occurred when I mixed linseed oil into the pigment that I used to darken the sky. Since the canvas was standing upright, the medium, through the course of a few days, dripped down eventually hardening and creating this texture. And because it took me a few days after painting that layer to return to the studio, I returned to a painting that had released tears of its own.

In some ways I think of this painting in the same way a Catholic views a weeping statue. In other ways it reminds me of rain and the smell of wet dirt. I once heard someone refer to that smell as the smell of “God”.

The painting now hangs in my basement study area, near a window where the natural light makes makes the droplets more prominent during certain times of the day. Even though it is a relic of this time in my life, it brings me so much joy to be able to see this painting in my day to day, and it’s become my treasured piece.

I love this piece because when I look at it I’m reminded of a trip that was filled with volcanic, sensual energies.
It is also the piece that opened up the medium of watercolor for me.

This piece was created on a getaway trip to Guatemala with the man that is now my fiance. During our time there we came across the work of Nan Cruz on a visit to La Galeria art gallery in Panajachel. Her paintings felt so alive, pulsating with the colors and strokes and I loved that essence. I was inspired by this visit and began playing with the paint, and in this moment of play I discovered a new layering process for my work.

On the outdoor patio of the home we had rented was a strong water spout. I had been painting outside, my body warm from the sun. Seeking relief, I went over to the spout to refresh myself. I then took my painting and ran it under the water as well, drenching the paper and fading some of the color I had applied. I repeated this process as I painted, laying in the sun applying paint and then taking it over to the water spout to refresh it from the heat, from that came the background that later resulted in this painting.

These pieces helped release blockages I was experiencing with oil paint at the time, and became catalysts for unlocking the medium for me again after I had stopped using it during my college years.

I made these pieces with my dear friend Kenrick McFarlane, who’s also a very talented painter that I admire. Kenrick and I went to the same highschool and even have a very impactful elementary art teacher in common, who we still talk about to this day. But I really got to know him on our rides back from art school in the city to the suburbs, where on occasion I’d bump into him on the train and bus and we’d spend the ride home talking about life. Kenrick has always had a very spiritual presence, the one that comes from reflection and a certain openness to life.

In the fall of 2020 I had began renting a studio at Mana Contemporary as a way to creating art again. In the process I discovered I had blockages with oil paint that I was still carrying from my college years.

My early college years were a time when I was broke, tired, hungry, and in a low energy and high stress state. Because the materials for oil painting were so expensive and time consuming I developed a freeze state, too scared to touch the canvas for fear that my efforts would produce something I wasn’t proud of, too scared to make a “mistake”.

I had talked to Kenrick on occasion about this blockage so when he came to Chicago and stayed with me for a few days we decided to paint. This was a very therapeutic session for me, and it was fun.

To set the tone, it was summer 2021, and I had developed a practice I called “My midnight series”. Where I would go to the studio late at night and work on some sort of creative project. I liked working late at night, the world felt more still and my mind felt more open and receptive to a flow state.

So on one late night we went over to the studio, set up a canvas and began to paint. It was very freeing to make this piece, and began to unlock things for me. Whenever I felt myself getting stuck on a certain section, focusing more on the outcome than the process, Kenrick would notice and come in and sweep a brush full of paint across my area of fixation, snapping me out of it. It was what I needed. This first painting, “My Heart’s Desire”, took what I estimate was somewhere between 1-3 hours and afterwards I felt alleviated. Painting with Kenrick was fun, something I had been missing with the oil painting medium and so desperatly wanted to get back to.

The second collab piece we worked on at his studio happened after his sold out solo show with M+B gallery: “Naked and Famous”. I had flown out to L. A. to see the show and we decided to set up sometime to paint again. For this second session we drank wine and blasted music. I had been listening to romantic ballads at the time so we played some Angeles Negros, Pasteles Verdes, music of the 70’s. After a few hours of this we stepped back and both agreed to flip the canvas 180 to what we both felt was it’s final form, we titled it “A Journey into Oaxaca”.

Wendy’s Home Videos, digital media, 2023 ongoing

I started this project in 2023, when I purchased my first camcorder at a used electronic store in Vegas. These are some stills from my collection of personal videos. There’s something so nostalgic about documenting life through a camcorder. My mom used to film our day to day life growing up and to this day my siblings and I enjoy watching back the moments she recorded, so I’ve been inspired by that process of documentation.