I am the proud daughter of a war refugee from Ukraine. This simple statement has been a catalyst for years of my artistic investigation, as has my identity as a Texas woman with severed roots. The growth of new roots, the bonds of home and belonging, singular identities encompassing worlds and long lines of ancestors, portraits of those we can only imagine in photographs we never had: these are things at the core of my imagery. I reference the traditional and folk arts of the lands of my heritage, Ukraine and the Southern United States to drape the figures with imagined narratives, memories, or fantasies of far away places which are lost or cannot be returned to. The botanical imagery roots the figures, figuratively and literally to their place of belonging.