Laurie Papou explores issues of identity and intimacy in the four-part painted suite, Mother May I? In each iteration of the same scene, the artist portrays herself as a defiant Mother Nature clutching fruits such that her naked body is either concealed or exposed. Within the Edenic West Coast environment bathed in sun, Papou’s statuesque posture is punctuated by shadows, lending a crisp dimensionality to her Realism. Painted with oil glazes that reveal the grains of the artworks’ wood supports, Papou’s figure becomes both in and of the forest landscape.