Now, at a moment when photography is so pervasive that it's been forced to grapple with its own identity and look inward, it feels like a natural moment for painting to look out, to reclaim that directive of picturing America.

I could name many women who travel or who work with America as a theme. I think it was more not being able to name canonical women, whose work is part of the American canon.

Painting is the chance to create a different space, or different way of picturing a literal stream of images.

One of the reasons I work serially, but also one of the reasons that I try to claim space in painting, is I'm desperately interested in asking: How can a group of images, or even two images, have meaning together?

We talk often about being in a media-saturated society, and we are surrounded by image streams. But it's nihilistic. There's a real randomness to all of it.

There are many options for how images can aggregate not to nihilism, but to significance, or to meaning.

Now, at a moment when photography is so pervasive that it's been forced to grapple with its own identity and look inward, it feels like a natural moment for painting to look out, to reclaim that directive of picturing America.