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I'm a painter.

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I make large-scale figurative paintings,

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which means I paint people

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like this.

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But I'm here tonight to tell you
about something personal

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that changed my work and my perspective.

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It's something we all go through,

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and my hope is that my experience
may be helpful to somebody.

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To give you some background on me,
I grew up the youngest of eight.

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Yes, eight kids in my family.

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I have six older brothers and a sister.

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To give you a sense of what that's like,

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when my family went on vacation,

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we had a bus.

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(Laughter)

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My supermom would drive us all over town

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to our various after-school activities --

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not in the bus.

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We had a regular car, too.

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She would take me to art classes,

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and not just one or two.

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She took me to every available art class
from when I was eight to 16,

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because that's all I wanted to do.

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She even took a class with me
in New York City.

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Now, being the youngest of eight,
I learned a few survival skills.

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Rule number one:

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don't let your big brother
see you do anything stupid.

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So I learned to be quiet and neat

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and careful to follow the rules
and stay in line.

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But painting was where I made the rules.

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That was my private world.

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By 14, I knew I really wanted
to be an artist.

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My big plan was to be a waitress
to support my painting.

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So I continued honing my skills.

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I went to graduate school
and I got an MFA,

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and at my first solo show,
my brother asked me,

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"What do all these red dots
mean next to the paintings?"

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Nobody was more surprised than me.

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The red dots meant
that the paintings were sold

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and that I'd be able to pay my rent

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with painting.

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Now, my apartment
had four electrical outlets,

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and I couldn't use a microwave
and a toaster at the same time,

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but still, I could pay my rent.

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So I was very happy.

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Here's a painting
from back around that time.

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I needed it to be
as realistic as possible.

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It had to be specific and believable.

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This was the place where I was
isolated and in total control.

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Since then, I've made a career
of painting people in water.

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Bathtubs and showers were
the perfect enclosed environment.

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It was intimate and private,

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and water was this complicated challenge
that kept me busy for a decade.

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I made about 200 of these paintings,

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some of them six to eight feet,

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like this one.

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For this painting, I mixed flour in
with the bathwater to make it cloudy

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and I floated cooking oil on the surface

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and stuck a girl in it,

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and when I lit it up,

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it was so beautiful
I couldn't wait to paint it.

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I was driven by this
kind of impulsive curiosity,

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always looking for something new to add:

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vinyl, steam, glass.

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I once put all this Vaseline
in my head and hair

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just to see what that would look like.

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Don't do that.

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(Laughter)

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So it was going well.

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I was finding my way.

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I was eager and motivated

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and surrounded by artists,

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always going to openings and events.

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I was having some success and recognition

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and I moved into an apartment
with more than four outlets.

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My mom and I would stay up very late

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talking about our latest ideas
and inspiring each other.

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She made beautiful pottery.

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I have a friend named Bo
who made this painting

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of his wife and I dancing by the ocean,

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and he called it "The Light Years."

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I asked him what that meant, and he said,

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"Well, that's when you've stepped
into adulthood, you're no longer a child,

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but you're not yet weighed down
by the responsibilities of life."

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That was it. It was the light years.

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On October 8, 2011,

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the light years came to an end.

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My mom was diagnosed with lung cancer.

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It had spread to her bones,
and it was in her brain.

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When she told me this, I fell to my knees.

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I totally lost it.

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And when I got myself together
and I looked at her,

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I realized, this isn't about me.

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This is about figuring out
how to help her.

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My father is a doctor,

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and so we had a great advantage
having him in charge,

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and he did a beautiful job
taking care of her.

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But I, too, wanted to do
everything I could to help,

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so I wanted to try everything.

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We all did.

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I researched alternative medicines,

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diets, juicing, acupuncture.

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Finally, I asked her,

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"Is this what you want me to do?"

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And she said, "No."

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She said, "Pace yourself.
I'm going to need you later."

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She knew what was happening,

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and she knew what the doctors

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and the experts
and the internet didn't know:

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how she wanted to go through this.

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I just needed to ask her.

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I realized that if I tried to fix it,

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I would miss it.

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So I just started to be with her,

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whatever that meant
and whatever situation came up,

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just really listen to her.

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If before I was resisting,
then now I was surrendering,

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giving up trying to control
the uncontrollable

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and just being there in it with her.

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Time slowed down,

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and the date was irrelevant.

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We developed a routine.

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Early each morning I would crawl
into bed with her and sleep with her.

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My brother would come for breakfast

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and we'd be so glad to hear
his car coming up the driveway.

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So I'd help her up and take both her hands

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and help her walk to the kitchen.

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She had this huge mug she made

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she loved to drink her coffee out of,

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and she loved Irish soda bread
for breakfast.

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Afterwards was the shower,

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and she loved this part.

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She loved the warm water,

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so I made this as indulgent as I could,

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like a spa.

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My sister would help sometimes.

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We had warm towels

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and slippers ready immediately

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so she never got cold for a second.

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I'd blow-dry her hair.

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My brothers would come in the evenings
and bring their kids,

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and that was the highlight of her day.

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Over time, we started to use a wheelchair,

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and she didn't want to eat so much,

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and she used the tiniest little teacup
we could find to drink her coffee.

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I couldn't support her myself anymore,

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so we hired an aide
to help me with the showers.

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These simple daily activities

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became our sacred ritual,

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and we repeated them day after day

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as the cancer grew.

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It was humbling and painful

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and exactly where I wanted to be.

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We called this time "the beautiful awful."

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She died on October 26, 2012.

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It was a year and three weeks
after her diagnosis.

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She was gone.

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My brothers, sister, and father and I

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all came together in this
supportive and attentive way.

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It was as though our whole family dynamic

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and all our established roles vanished

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and we were just
all together in this unknown,

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feeling the same thing

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and taking care of each other.

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I'm so grateful for them.

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As someone who spends most
of my time alone in a studio working,

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I had no idea that this kind of connection

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could be so important, so healing.

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This was the most important thing.

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It was what I always wanted.

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So after the funeral, it was time
for me to go back to my studio.

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So I packed up my car
and I drove back to Brooklyn,

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and painting is what I've always done,
so that's what I did.

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And here's what happened.

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It's like a release of everything
that was unraveling in me.

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That safe, very, very carefully
rendered safe place

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that I created in all my other paintings,

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it was a myth.

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It didn't work.

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And I was afraid, because
I didn't want to paint anymore.

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So I went into the woods.

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I thought, I'll try that, going outside.

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I got my paints,
and I wasn't a landscape painter,

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but I wasn't really
much of any kind of painter at all,

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so I had no attachment, no expectation,

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which allowed me to be reckless and free.

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I actually left one of these wet paintings

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outside overnight

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next to a light in the woods.

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By the morning it was lacquered with bugs.

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But I didn't care.
It didn't matter. It didn't matter.

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I took all these paintings
back to my studio,

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and scraped them, and carved into them,

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and poured paint thinner on them,

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put more paint on top, drew on them.

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I had no plan,

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but I was watching what was happening.

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This is the one with all the bugs in it.

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I wasn't trying to represent a real space.

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It was the chaos and the imperfections
that were fascinating me,

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and something started to happen.

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I got curious again.

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This is another one from the woods.

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There was a caveat now, though.

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I couldn't be controlling
the paint like I used to.

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It had to be about implying
and suggesting,

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not explaining or describing.

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And that imperfect,
chaotic, turbulent surface

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is what told the story.

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I started to be as curious
as I was when I was a student.

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So the next thing was I wanted
to put figures in these paintings, people,

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and I loved this new environment,

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so I wanted to have
both people and this atmosphere.

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When the idea hit me of how to do this,

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I got kind of nauseous and dizzy,

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which is really just adrenaline, probably,

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but for me it's a really good sign.

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And so now I want to show you
what I've been working on.

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It's something I haven't shown yet,
and it's like a preview, I guess,

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of my upcoming show,

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what I have so far.

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Expansive space

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instead of the isolated bathtub.

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I'm going outside instead of inside.

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Loosening control,

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savoring the imperfections,

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allowing the --

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allowing the imperfections.

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And in that imperfection,

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you can find a vulnerability.

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I could feel my deepest intention,
what matters most to me,

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that human connection

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that can happen in a space
where there's no resisting or controlling.

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I want to make paintings about that.

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So here's what I learned.

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We're all going to have
big losses in our lives,

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maybe a job or a career,

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relationships, love, our youth.

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We're going to lose our health,

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people we love.

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These kinds of losses
are out of our control.

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They're unpredictable,

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and they bring us to our knees.

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And so I say, let them.

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Fall to your knees. Be humbled.

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Let go of trying to change it

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or even wanting it to be different.

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It just is.

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And then there's space,

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and in that space feel your vulnerability,

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what matters most to you,

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your deepest intention.

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And be curious to connect

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to what and who is really here,

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awake and alive.

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It's what we all want.

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Let's take the opportunity
to find something beautiful

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in the unknown, in the unpredictable,

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and even in the awful.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)