Before they became paintings, the pieces of fabric I paint on had lives of their own. They were tablecloths, curtains, slipcovers, and other domestic ephemera. I start my compositions with the clean-lined, cavernous dream spaces of mid-century modernist homes, which I lift from the pages of vintage homemaking magazines. I draw them large in charcoal, combining elements from several sources. I harvest human characters from advertisements, pulling them out of their original contexts. I draw the people on separate pieces of paper, cut them out, and pin them up in their new homes. I move them around, redraw them in different sizes, change out their spouses and furniture. In the drawings I work out the scale, the point of view, and how much I want to mess with traditional perspective. When I arrive at a composition I’m satisfied with, I commit and glue them down. Then I crop the drawings, sometimes as rectangles, sometimes along perspective lines. I build a panel or panels to match the cropped shapes, cover the panels with the printed fabric, and seal them with clear acrylic. I usually have an idea of what I want the people and their furnishings to convey through the patterns they’re sporting. In this series I wanted everyone to be clad in bright geometrics, to emphasize their modernity, and as a counterpoint to the nostalgic vibe some of them give off. I block the image onto the surface in paint, measuring from the drawing to get the figures in the right places. I use oil glazes to form the shadows on the figures and give them dimension. Here is “Best Combination of Filter and Good Taste” sketched onto the panel. . . . the same piece blocked in . . . . . . and a little further along.