*Reminder: the pools seen in this series paintings were created by the melting of popsicles I had previously made out of watercolors and inks
Why popsicles? Because of the nostalgia and the mess. Everyone has a childhood memory that involves a popsicle of some sort. Doesn't matter if they were homemade or store bought, if they were fancy or were nothing more than artificially dyed sugar water in plastic sleeves- it's a memory that we all can relate to. How our tongues and lips would get stained, the pools of melted colors left behind when they melted.
Sugar & Vice (a play on the nursery rhyme that girls are "sugar and spice and everything nice") is the story of growing up. The sometimes funny, sometimes sad -oftentimes confusing- road between girlhood and womanhood. How those stages melt into each other- neither having a definitive beginning or end, and how those experiences leave behind "stains" that influence what we think and who we become.