“Everything in this world is equal, but as long as females use their gender to their advantage they will never have 100-percent equality,” a male artist told me recently during a studio visit. “Women have always been the beauty and the muse.”

The subject of gender equality is at the forefront of my recent paintings, particularly society’s degradation and objectification of the female body. Appropriating messages from pop culture and advertising; I depict the shocked innocence of cats reacting to the sexualized environment that consumes us. Humorous and aimed towards a younger generation, these images are based on cats from Internet memes and often include bawdy phrases like “pussy wagon”, “motor-boating”, and “wife-ing”. The more ridiculous the images are, the better.