If you were to survey celebrated women, with every step toward real success there came a baby.

If you were to survey celebrated women, with every step toward real success there came a baby.

I question the negative connotations of fabric, of ribbon, of lace. I turn these symbols of our imprisonment around.

Women have always collected things and saved and recycled them because leftovers yielded nourishment in new forms. The decorative functional objects women made often spoke in a secret language, bore a covert imagery. When we read these images in needlework, in paintings, in quilts, rugs and scrapbooks, we sometimes find a cry for help, sometimes an allusion to a secret political alignment, sometimes a moving symbol about the relationships between men and women.

When I look back on the years of excessive self-doubt, I wonder how I was able to make my paintings. In part, I managed to paint because I had a desire, as strong as the desire for food and sex, to push through, to make an image that signified.