Doll’s House

Through this series of oil paintings, drawings, and digital images, I explore the themes of both fear and bliss, and how they entwine between my childhood memories. Twisted, personified shadows in lively playrooms, terrifyingly human-like dolls, and bouquets of beautiful flowers accompanied by deathly moths. In my presentation of spooky dollhouses, I use references of horror in pop-culture, such as The Exorcist, Nosferatu, and The Shining. In my search of the dollhouse’s symbolic meaning, I researched the Henrik Ibsen’s famous play by A Doll’s House. The desire to build emotional tension within my paintings was inspired by Ibsen’s  everlasting message of the interaction between love and hate, fear and bliss, and freedom and imprisonment.

“Our home has been nothing but a playroom. I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I was papa's doll-child; and here the children have been my dolls.”  Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House