Beneath the Silks is a series rooted in my upbringing in Kentucky, where equine culture was both everyday life and regional pride. Growing up outside of Louisville, I rode horses from a young age and was immersed in the traditions, aesthetics, and social rituals of the Bluegrass State. This series is a homage to that world and the dismantling of it.

Horse racing exists as spectacle: elegance, wealth, lineage, and performance. The brightly colored racing silks signal prestige and ownership, while the public image of the sport remains polished and celebratory. These paintings shift attention away from the romanticizing and toward the emotional tension beneath it. Tightly cropped compositions bring the viewer uncomfortably close, where racehorses become metaphors for the performative expectations of elite social culture and the private pressure that exists behind closed doors. The work explores the space between beauty and unease, asking what lives beneath the facade.