Who would you be, without your carefully built infrastructure? When your context is removed, what remains?

Here We Can Be Free explores themes of intimacy, mortality, vulnerability, and desire in queer relationships, particularly between women, and non-binary people. I situate these relationships in the natural environment of the area in which I live and work. This is an acknowledgement of the fact that as humans, our relationship with the natural environment is unavoidable and complicated. It is also an acceptance that our identities are shaped, influenced, celebrated and criticized within societal constructs; nature is indifferent, without prejudice or preference.

Situated in the rugged Canadian landscape of the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland, and the lush coastal forests of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, these paintings honour both the natural environment and the natural nude state of one's body. They are a love letter to joy, freedom, safety, and boundless creativity.