The paintings seek to investigate dualities of beauty and ugliness, movement and paralysis, beckoning and withdrawal, naïveté and sophistication, religion and secularity, specificity and generalization. They imagine a Jewish hyperfemininity within a fairy tale of art history, using layers of transparent yet saturated paint, in a subtractive, cross-hatched drawing mode. This creates luminescent, bright coloration, as well as a mechanical, brutal hard edge. Ultimately, the paintings are “defaced” with Swarovski crystals, engaging in histories of craft and a nostalgia for glitter, while creating moments of light and texture that dissolve the real and unreal. The figures are often sheltered by veils, or beneath the cover of trees and dappled shadows, evoking the shrouding of Leah, the masquerade of Esther, and the basket of Moses. The veil obscures the face in the same way that pattern, sparkle, and technical virtuosity hide the heartache of these figures. It’s a trick—a “look over here so I can do this while you’re distracted”—to hide a secret Jewishness, sadness, and self-consciousness, under classicizing ideas of femininity and narrative.