For this piece, I have been collecting found paintings and prints of bird pairs. Birds are the ultimate symbol for freedom, and yet the birds in these popular images are never found in flight. These birds rest on limbs, and while they could fly away at any moment, they are depicted as coupled and grounded.

These romantic images hang benignly in living rooms across the country, while their subtext of gender roles and sexual conventions usually remains unacknowledged. I paint the cages into these scenarios to draw attention to these conventions and complicate the act of decoding the images.