SF: One of the magical things about taking in a painting is tracing the artist's touch with your eyes; it can trigger all kinds of odd sensations when you follow a brushstroke across the canvas. You might feel the artist's movement, like a low-key mirror-touch synesthesia. In my oil paintings, I use images of hands to guide viewers into large fields of color. So touch becomes a way to see sensually, like feeling your way in the dark. In my recent collages, the imagery of touch is even more clear. These bodies are twisting around, looking for pleasure, folding into themselves. When we are constantly told our bodies are supposed to be productive, self-pleasure can be a small radical act.

SF: My sketchbook is life! It's my journal, to-do-list, notes on every book or film I consume, and then of course it's a collection of drawings from life. I draw myself, my surroundings, friends and lovers. I feel lucky that people let me draw them in vulnerable moments. Later, I'll translate those drawings, quite loosely, into my paintings and collages. If I draw people I'm close to, I have their felt presence with me while I paint even if I gradually let the imagery go.

SF: Working smaller happened at first out of convenience. I'd been ordered to shelter in place in New York and just holed up with my watercolors, so this is what came out. But every scale presents its own constraints and freedoms. These kind of just tumbled out of me, and are easy to edit and experiment with. Every cut is huge and bold on such an intimate scale.

SF: I don't think of my paintings as literal characters. Body parts structure these collages, but the end product is something much more abstract, a mass or a calligraphic mark composed of bodily elements. In that way, they function like ciphers, and each viewer engages in their own way. Ultimately it's up to the viewer to decide if they are spying on something illicit or being included in something joyful.