Caitlin Winner Studio Release
Early Access August 6th-10th 2026
Stonefly
52x 44 inches
Oil on linen
White Oak Float frame
While I was taking reference photos for this painting, a winter stonefly kept landing on my daughter’s face. I knew I wanted it in the painting, because it marked the season, and because it reminded me of Dutch still lifes with insects devouring the fruit.
For the landscape, I merged references from winter and spring in attempt to make this painting stretch forwards and backwards in time. Parts of her fade into the landscape behind her, but the flowers pop out at us as the focus of the painting.
I always leave clues about how a painting was made. Here it's a sharp edge in the lower right, where the collage cuts from one season to another. The horizon line slopes behind her, inline with her eyes, to emphasize what she sees when looking back at us. The driveway receding into the distance is a nod to the path in Munch's The Scream.
Later, I learned stoneflies have been around for 250 million years and their presence is a good sign for the immediate environment because they need clean, oxygen-rich freshwater. Aside from the omen, I loved the clash of an ancient insect landing on my very contemporary kid in her polka-dot pants and white Crocs.
The precursor painting, The Scream (below), was a reminder of what we might lose as a society obsessed with extraction and power. This painting is looking both ways, backwards with grief but also forward to what’s still possible.
Please note, this painting is still drying and will ship in late August.
40 x 45 inches
Oil on linen
This was my second attempt at a painting about what it feels like to watch my daughter grow up in parallel with a natural world in decline. I waited a whole year for the daffodils to bloom again and took new reference photos of her, this time in strong sunlight. I thought better source photos would help me make the painting I had wanted to make the year before.
While we were taking the photos, a winter stonefly kept landing on her face, and I knew I wanted it in the painting. Stoneflies are ancient insects whose presence can be an indicator of clean, oxygen-rich freshwater. It felt like an optimistic omen. And I loved that this tiny, ancient creature kept landing on this very contemporary kid in polka-dot pants and white Crocs.
The Scream
40 x 30 inches
Oil on linen
White Oak Flush frame
In this painting, my daughter is holding an impossibly large bundle of daffodils. The flowers are exploding out around her head and small body. She stands in a bare, unsettled landscape.
This painting was inspired by Edward Munch’s The Scream.
Munch wrote about feeling overwhelmed by the sound and speed of modern life, pausing on a walk, sensing an infinite scream passing through nature. I had felt a similar intense but nebulous feeling while working on this painting.
The daffodils came to represent the beauty that could exist in the world. My daughter doesn't know the world yet. She's still protected. She sees beauty and gathers it unabashedly, more than she can hold.
What might have become a sweet painting about a child holding flowers developed layers during the year I worked on it. The child and the flowers are still beautiful, but woven in is a scream about the world she will eventually have to enter, an anger toward the hostilities she may one day face, and a fear that the flowers she gathers today may become harder to find.
29 x 39 inches
Oil on linen
White Oak Flush frame
In this painting, my daughter is holding an impossibly large bundle of daffodils. The flowers are exploding out around her head and small body. She stands in a bare, unsettled landscape.
Where did this image come from? And why does it feel urgent now?
Edvard Munch wrote about feeling overwhelmed by the sound and speed of modern life, pausing on a walk, sensing an infinite scream passing through nature. I had felt a similar intense but nebulous feeling while working on this painting.
The daffodils have come to represent the beauty that could exist. My daughter doesn't know the world yet. She's still protected. She sees beauty and gathers it unabashedly, more than she can hold.
What might have become a sweet painting about a child holding flowers developed layers during the year I worked on it. The child and the flowers are still beautiful, but woven in is a scream about the world she will eventually have to enter. An anger toward the hostilities she may one day face. And a fear that the flowers she gathers today may become harder to find.
Daffodils by Studio Sink
15 x 12 inches
Oil on linen
Maple Flush frame
Daffodils are my annual mile marker, a chance to find out how much I've learned since last year. Every year I try my hardest, and every year they're still hard.
This year, my studio just happened to be covered in them. Daffodils from life, daffodils from photos, alongside the two larger paintings of my daughter with fistfuls of daffodils. I let myself obsess.
For this still life, I wanted crisp, clear color shapes. I started from life, then worked from photos as the light shifted over the still life.
Daffodils are irresistible because they come up before anything else, the first color after months of gray, and if you're not careful, you miss them. I'm drawn to that transience, to the warm and cool yellows, to the beginning and ending of things.
15 x 12 inches
Oil on linen
Daffodils are my annual mile marker, a chance to find out how much I have learned since last year. Every year I try my hardest, and every year they’re still hard.
This year I wanted crisp, clear color shapes. I started from life, then used photos I took as the light shifted over the still life.
I was so focused on the flowers but in the end I was just as happy with the fabric draping behind them.
Daffodil Study I
12 x 10 inches, framed
Gouache on paper
Maple frame, conservation glass
I never skip the gouache study. It’s where I test color and composition but more importantly, its where I test my excitement. If I finish a study and can't wait to make the oil painting, I know the image is ready. If that feeling isn't there, I set the idea aside and wait until it comes back in a stronger form.
In this study, I was exploring how much of the figure I could obscure with flowers before the painting stopped being about my daughter and started being about the daffodils themselves.
This study passed the excitement test and became The Scream.
12 x 10 inches
Maple frame, Museum glass
In this study, my daughter is holding an impossibly large bundle of daffodils. They explode out around her small body, more than she can carry. She stands in a bare, unsettled landscape.
This spring I was reading about artists working in turbulent times. The great teacher Hans Hofmann told his students that the artist's responsibility, especially in dark times, was to “preserve, nurture and glorify the human spirit”.
Georgia O'Keeffe said she could say things with color and shape that she had no words for. Edvard Munch’s The Scream also visualized an intense, nebulous feeling. In his diary, he wrote about feeling overwhelmed by the sound and speed of modern life, pausing on a walk, sensing “an infinite scream passing through nature.”
In my painting, the daffodils have come to represent the beauty that could exist. In an alternate reality where power wasn’t asymmetrical, where people were treated with dignity, and where the natural world was allowed to thrive. My daughter doesn’t know the world yet. She’s still protected. She sees beauty and gathers it unabashedly, more than she can hold.
Daffodil Study II
15 x 13 inches, framed
Gouache on Paper
Maple frame, conservation glass
I'd waited a full year for the daffodils to bloom again, hoping a second attempt would get me closer to the idea I had for the large paintings above. Could I convincingly merge two seasons, late winter, when there was still snow on the ground, and early spring, once it had melted, into a single believable moment?
I worked from source photos that lit up my daughter's face, and I was happy with how simple the forms stayed in gouache. The medium forces me to work general rather than detailed. If a painting works in big shapes, it will usually works once I add detail. The opposite isn't always true.
This is the study became Stonefly.
15 x 13 inches
Maple frame, Museum glass
I waited an entire year for daffodils to bloom again so I could make another attempt at this idea: my daughter gathering flowers in a mostly barren world. This year I photographed her in sunlight so her face could have more presence in the painting and I blended together references from late winter when there was still snow on the ground with early spring when the snow had melted, signifying birth and renewal, and hope.
Delighted Boy
38 x 26 inches
Oil on linen
White Oak Float frame
This painting began as a small study that I loved. I scaled it up to oils and matched the technique, using a glaze to separate the layers so each remains visible beneath the next.
While I was working on it, I came across a painting by the Swiss artist Ferdinand Hodler of a very similar subject: a boy lost in his own world, surrounded by a summer green field.
I wanted to mix the contemporary with the historical, so I borrowed his title and brought over the little white flowers.
38 x 26 inches
Oil on linen
White Oak Float frame
This painting began as a small study that I loved. I scaled it up to oils and matched the technique, using a glaze to separate the layers so each remains visible beneath the next.
While I was working on it, I came across a painting by the Swiss artist Ferdinand Hodler of a very similar subject: a boy lost in his own world, surrounded by a summer green field.
I wanted to mix the contemporary with the historical, so I borrowed his title and brought over the little white flowers, juxtaposed against the bright blue crocs on my son's feet.
Book of Hours
35 x 33 inches
Oil on linen
White Oak Float frame
I've always been intrigued by the illustrations, known as illuminations, in medieval manuscripts. The level of detail is intense, especially knowing that these little books were made by hand for a single person, often a woman, to keep in her pocket.
These manuscripts are called Books of Hours in English. The French called the most beautiful ones Belles Heures. Beautiful hours.
“Reciting the hours” meant reading one of the devotions out loud every hour throughout the day in order to establish a closer connection to God.
In this painting I wanted to explore the particular sensation of time that came with mothering. Hour after hour, being tethered to your own magical creation. Beautiful hours. Endless hours.
I modified this painting a dozen times over two and a half years, swapping versions of my children in and out until it came down to just this one. A child in a rocking chair.
When I was nearly done, I held the painting up to the window to mark the edges for stretching. The light passed through the thinner passages of paint, so from the front it appeared that those sections glowed. I spent the next few weeks trying to recreate that effect in oil paint.
Ultimately, a Book of Hours was a personal object, made by hand for one reader. I think about that with painting too. The hours that go into making something by hand, and how it ends up living in one person's home, becoming part of their daily life.
34 x 32 inches
Oil on linen
White Oak Float frame
I've always been intrigued by the illustrations, known as illuminations, in medieval manuscripts. The level of detail is crazy, especially knowing that these little books were made by hand for a single person, often a woman, to keep in her pocket.
These manuscripts are called Books of Hours in English. The French called the most beautiful ones Belles Heures. Beautiful hours. “Reciting the hours” meant reading one of the devotions out loud every hour throughout the day in order to establish a closer connection to God.
In this painting I wanted to explore the particular sensation of time that came with mothering. Hour after hour, being tethered to your own magical creation. Beautiful hours. Endless hours.
I modified this painting a dozen times over two and a half years, swapping versions of my children in and out until it came down to just this one. A child in a rocking chair.
When I was nearly done, I held the painting up to the window to mark the edges for stretching. The light passed through the thinner passages of paint, so from the front it appeared that those sections glowed. I spent the next few weeks trying to recreate that effect in oil paint.
Ultimately, a Book of Hours was a personal object, made by hand for one reader. I think about that with painting too. The hours that go into making something by hand, and how it ends up living in one person's home, becoming part of their daily life.
Madonna and Child After Bellini
18 x 18 inches
Oil on linen
Oak Flush frame
This composition is borrowed from Bellini's Madonna and Child, but instead of velvet fabrics and symbolic objects, I built it from the materials I had nearby: a kitchen sponge, a water glass, and blue beads threaded onto a pipe cleaner, the kinds of things that accumulate in a home with young children.
I was curious what would happen if I translated a sacred composition into ordinary objects. Could the structure still hold meaning when filled with domestic every day things?
Looking back over this collection, I realized this painting was the inverse of everything else here. Whether I'm painting my children, a landscape, or a still life, each work begins with something ordinary and searches for the sacred within it.
18 x 18 inches
Oil on linen
Oak Flush frame
This still life was inspired by Giovanni Bellini's Madonna and Child. I arranged fabrics and objects from my contemporary life into a similar compositional structure, with bowls, cups, and a spool of twine standing in for the Madonna and Child.
The blue fabric is the same color as the blue robe worn by the Virgin Mary, and the red cloth of honor sits behind the figures in both paintings. For the distant blue sky on the left I used a kitchen sponge, waterglass, and a string of blue beads on a pipe cleaner.
The sacred and the domestic have always lived close together.
Girl After Nap
36 x 23 inches
Oil on linen
White Oak Flush frame
In this painting my daughter is just waking up from a nap. She's in a sleepy daze, a rare moment of stillness, staring out the window. It was early April, around 3pm. The grass outside was green, but the trees were still bare.
When I saw the scene I knew it would be a painting. The warm neutrals inside and the cool exterior, fit together like a puzzle. I lightly modified my references, pulling the patch of light on the floor into the frame and shifting her position slightly on the bench so the light would glow around her.
36 x 23 inches
Oil on linen
White Oak Flush frame
In this painting my daughter is just waking up from a nap. She is mesmerized by a set of hourglasses filling and emptying on the window sill. It was April, around 3pm. The grass outside was green, but not the trees.
When I saw the scene I knew it would be a painting. The neutrals inside, the cool exterior and the room and the window weren't fighting each other. I pulled the patch of light on the floor into the frame and shifted her position slightly on the bench so the light would glow around her.
This moment would never happen again. And yet, here it is for eternity.
Sap Study
12 x 12 inches, framed
Gouache on paper
Maple frame, conservation glass
I’m always looking for bodies in motion, here my children are tapping trees for maple syrup and they are blanketed in late day, early spring sunlight. I composed this study out of a handful of photographs. I liked that the sky and their clothing were so intensely saturated and that the trees and sap tubes seemed to echo the shapes of their bodies.
12 x 12 inches
Gouache on Paper
Maple frame, conservation glass
I’m always looking for bodies in motion, here my children are tapping trees for maple syrup and they are blanketed in late day, early spring sunlight. I composed this study out of a handful of photographs, the trees and sap tubes echoing the shapes of their bodies.
Straw House Study
9.5 x 11.5 inches, framed
Gouache on paper
Maple frame, conservation glass
Sometimes I have a clear sense of my story before I begin, but sometimes it emerges along the way.
This idea began with a photograph of my daughter on our front porch. I started researching arches, porches, and transitional spaces. In medieval paintings, only holy figures are positioned under archways.
As I worked through the composition in gouache, the narrative started to emerge: the fragility of life, how tenuous safety can feel even in joyous times.
Making the study helped solidify the contrasts between the seriousness of history and the playfulness of childhood, the faded past and the vividness of contemporary times.
9.5 x 11.5 inches
Gouache on Paper
Maple frame, conservation glass
Sometimes I have a clear sense of my story before I begin, but sometimes it emerges along the way.
This idea began with a photograph of my daughter on our front porch. I started researching arches, porches, and transitional spaces. In medieval paintings, only holy figures are positioned under archways.
I came across a relief of a Greco-Roman athlete leaning on a hoop, which reminded me of the pink hula hoops my kids had been playing with.
As I worked through the composition in gouache, the narrative started to emerge: the fragility of life, how tenuous safety can feel even in joyous times. It helped solidify the contrasts between the seriousness of history and the playfulness of childhood, the faded past and the vividness of contemporary times.
San Miguel Dome
12 x 10 inches
Oil on linen
Maple Flush frame
I don't keep a sketchbook, but I do paint from life all the time. The next three paintings were made during a week painting outside in San Miguel de Allende.
Painting outside is how I practice seeing color and value. When I go back inside to paint from photos for my larger, multi-figure work, that sharpened color sense comes with me. I have fresh color relationships burned into my mind that I can use even if the photograph itself didn't capture them.
This is one of several paintings I made from a rooftop in San Miguel de Allende. I couldn't resist the morning sun as it lit up each portion of the dome to different degrees. The real challenge and surprise was the square of mid-tone shadow below, with blue sky bouncing in along with pink from the building below.
12 x 10 inches
Oil on linen
Maple Flush frame
One of several paintings I made from a rooftop in San Miguel de Allende. I couldn't resist the morning sun as it lit up each portion of the dome to different degrees. The muted whites in shadow proved to be the real challenge, while the bank of blue sky scattered cool shadows throughout the landscape.
San Miguel Rooftop
9 x 7 inches
Oil on linen
Maple Flush frame
I gave into my love of symmetry for this painting. Even though there were many other fancier landmarks visible, this arrangement of buildings was my favorite from this particular rooftop. I liked how bathed in light the scene felt, and the very subtle variations in white.
This was a single-session painting, which means some of the imperfections and "errors" persist in the final piece, adding charm and freshness to the image.
9 x 7 inches
Oil on linen
Maple Flush frame
I gave into my love of symmetry for this painting. Even though there were many other landmarks visible, this arrangement of buildings and objects was my favorite from this particular rooftop. I liked how washed in light the scene felt. The intense sunlight reflecting off the pale buildings and the little yellow tent canopy on top.
San Miguel Street
9 x 7 inches
Oil on linen
Maple Flush frame
I painted this on a sweltering morning in San Miguel de Allende while my kids were kicking a soccer ball around nearby. I loved the little spouts poking out of the wall and the color of the blue building against the sky. As I worked, that shadow line kept sinking lower on the buildings and I rushed to get it in before it disappeared.
9 x 7 inches
Oil on linen
Maple Flush frame
I painted this on a sweltering morning in San Miguel de Allende while my kids were kicking a soccer ball around nearby. I loved the little spouts poking out of the wall and the color of the blue building against the sky. As I worked, that shadow line kept sinking lower on the buildings and I rushed to get it in before it disappeared.
Cider Study
13 x 14 inches, framed
Gouache on Paper
Maple Frame, conservation Glass
This is a study for a painting I worked on over three years. I made three different studies along the way.
The final painting ended up being about time, and how much of it had passed while I worked on the idea. When I started, my kids were 3 and 4. When I finished, they were 7 and 9.
The figures in the painting intuitively fit the golden spiral, something I accentuated in the large scale painting. At the center of the spiral, I painted a wristwatch on the bent over figure on the right to symbolize the passage of time.
13 x 14 inches
Gouache on Paper
Maple Frame, Museum Glass
This is an early study for a painting I worked on for three years. I made three different studies along the way.
The final painting ended up being about time, and how much of it had passed while I worked on the idea. When I started, my kids were 3 and 4. When I finished, they were 7 and 9.
The figures in the painting intuitively fit the golden spiral, something I accentuated in the large scale painting. At the center of the spiral, I painted a wristwatch on the bent over figure on the right.
Season of Plenty Study
12 x 13 inches , framed
Gouache on paper
Maple Frame, conservation glass
In this study I was exploring the connected shape of the figures. From above they form a circle and from the side they sprout out like tulip leaves. I echoed these two shapes in the splash in the background and in the inner tubes.
12 x 13 inches
Gouache on paper
Maple Frame, conservation glass
In this study I was exploring the connected shape of the figures. From above they form a circle and from the side they sprout out like tulip leaves. I echoed these two shapes in the splash in the background and in the inner tubes.
Slide Under Maples
12 x 10 inches
Oil on linen
Maple Flush frame
The trees and telephone poles make up the bones of this little landscape but the tiny orange slide under the towering maples was the little jewel I was most excited to paint into this fall scene.
12 x 10 inches
Oil on linen
Maple flush frame
The trees and telephone poles make up the bones of this little landscape but the tiny orange slide under the towering maples was the little jewel I was most excited to paint into this fall scene.
Snow Landscape
12 x 10 inches
Oil on linen
Maple Flush frame
I’ve been known to walk miles with my painting kit on my back looking for the perfect motif. Here I forced myself to look out my studio window. I looked long enough that everything became beautiful and I wanted to paint nothing other than dark blue shadows falling across the snow.
12 x 10 inches
Oil on linen
Maple Flush frame
I’ve been known to walk miles with my painting kit on my back looking for the perfect motif. Here I forced myself to look out my studio window. I looked long enough that everything became beautiful and I wanted to paint nothing other than dark blue shadows falling across the snow.
Deck Study
13 x 15 inches
Gouache on paper
Maple Frame, conservation glass
I love when the geometry of life lines up with the geometry of the canvas. Rectangles inside rectangles inside rectangles. Little toes standing on the edge of the canvas, posts and beams squared to the frame.
The bigger the figures relative to the frame the more monumental they feel. In this study I’m exploring the very big, very everyday story of having friends gathered in the springtime.
13 x 15 inches
Gouache
I love when the geometry of life lines up with the geometry of the canvas. Rectangles inside rectangles inside rectangles. Little toes standing on the edge of the canvas, posts and beams squared to the frame.
The bigger the figures relative to the frame the more monumental they feel. In this study I’m exploring the very big, very everyday story of having friends gathered in the springtime.