Emily Mae’s Revenge marks the beginning of the Red Cat paintings. Created in 2023, the work grew out of a period of watercolor studies made in between larger paintings that were focused on themes of domestic disturbance and tension.
The painting introduces the Red Cat as a symbol of independence and self-preservation. In this work, the cat reclaims the symbolic role of the painter, Emily Mae Smith, pulling that identity away from cycles of obligation and labor and returning it to a space of instinct, autonomy, and wild feminine reception. Emily Mae’s Revenge frames this act not as escape, but as a necessary reassertion of agency—an embodied refusal of endless duty in favor of self-directed freedom.
Death Passing Near Water is a solemn piece about transitioning and honoring elders after death. I transitioned alone after the rejection of my identity. Staying true to oneself, connecting to heritage and not leaving everything behind in a moment of loss develops into a contemplation of when the mutual honoring of independent existence will actually happen.
This piece features 3 horses (1 ghost horse) pulling a casket draped with a flag along a shoreline in a funeral procession. The shadowy horse among the two processional ones represents an ecstatic freeing of energy and a celebration of life with its turned back head and random hooves jutting out throughout the piece. The horse closest to the viewer throws up its tail in a tongue in cheek manner exposing its anus. On the draped fabric, obscured letters show the reversed word “BLOCKED” in a nod to current communication culture and the reality of the ended relationship.
Trans* in America reflects on transitioning in Maryland in 2013, shaped by access to supportive healthcare and legal protections. The experience of being affirmed by state systems fundamentally altered the relationship to government, nationhood, and the idea of civic belonging, which offered a perspective grounded in possibility rather than survival alone.
Trans* in America is a response to Catherine Khamnouane’s Half-Staffed. The painting itself presents a self-portrait reclaiming the white U.S. flag and restoring it with color, using the body as a site of intervention and reimagining. The gesture asks what the nation might look like if trans people could exist safely in positions of visibility and leadership.
Created within a political landscape that allows space for dreaming forward, the work positions legal protection not as an abstract concept but as a catalyst for imagination. Trans* in America asserts that the ability to envision a future is itself shaped by policy, care, and the conditions that make selfhood publicly possible.