Beating the Rug

I paint from memory, choosing memories of places or spaces that I recall in detail. Beating the Rug is about spring cleaning. My first apartment in Chicago was in a rundown building, but it had this narrow triangular balcony with a heavy, red metal banister and a spectacular view of Lake Michigan. At the time, I was pregnant with our first baby. I spent almost a whole month cleaning the apartment-nesting, so to speak. We had always had trouble with pigeons landing on our balcony and making a mess with their feathers and poop. But that spring, a pigeon made a nest on our balcony and laid her eggs. It seemed symbolic, so we let her stay. In the original painting, the rug is painted in oil paint, while the rest of the painting is in gouache. The rug is bright and clean, but the balcony is still dusty from the birds, spiders' webs and pollution.