As a married couple, our life together in Los Angeles is usually defined by a lot of outward-facing performance and polish. Jen is typically behind the lens shooting commercial sets and high-energy rock stages, while Sarah is deep in the world of live improv and character work. But with The Family Portrait, we wanted to turn that energy entirely inward. This series is our collision point—a direct collaboration born from Sarah's creative direction and humor, executed through Jen’s camera, and then transformed back onto Sarah's canvases. We are playing directly with that very specific, deeply familiar midcentury American tradition of the Sears Photo studio portrait. It’s an aesthetic that is incredibly cringey to our modern sensibility, yet completely timeless in how it tries to manufacture an image of domestic perfection. We wanted to take that rigid, nostalgic format and completely break it open using the beautiful, unvarnished chaos of our actual reality.

There is a constant, double mediation happening throughout this body of work. It’s not just a negotiation between our respective mediums—photography and painting—but a live negotiation between the two of us as counterparts in a marriage. The process begins with Jen’s intimate photographic self-portraits. Stepping away from her usual polished subjects, she uses the camera to archive the raw, vulnerable, and often hilarious rhythm of our world. You see the bargaining, the judgmental stares, and the absolute truths of building a life together. In doing this, the work draws comparison to artists like Catherine Opie, who document the raw archives of relationships and community, alongside Cindy Sherman’s brilliant manipulation of identity and character.

But our archive doesn't stop at the photograph; it undergoes a second layer of translation when we take those photographic frames and blow them up onto massive, large-scale canvases. If Jen’s photos capture the quiet, vulnerable truth of a moment, Sarah's paintings amplify them into something theatrical. Sarah translates the digital and film frames using bold, expressive brushwork and an energy pulled straight from her live improv and character work. A fleeting, character-filled expression that Jen captured in a fraction of a second is suddenly magnified, demanding fine-art reverence for the beautiful absurdity of our everyday life. Ultimately, this exhibition is a visual dialogue of our marriage—a world that is twice observed, constantly negotiated, and beautifully transformed.