Groundwork

Oil on canvas, 8 × 10 in and 10 × 20 in, 2025

This diptych situates baptism as the ideological foundation of religious formation. The upper panel depicts an infant baptism in a fluorescent liminal institutional interior. The lower panel directly references the “backrooms” internet phenomenon evocative of an endless, maze-like dimension of empty. At its center, a woman kneels in a position of humiliation, stripped and holding books in an outstretched, cruciform pose, her knees pressed into pencils. This gesture recreates corporal punishment practices reported in Catholic schooling, revealing how repentance is enacted through the performance of suffering. The title refers both to baptism as the groundwork of indoctrination and to the literal ground upon which discipline is carried out.