Artist Statment

My artwork is a confrontation between the domestic and wild. It’s about origins, strange and familial. It’s about my own girlhood and the crafting of my internal landscape through dreams and solo-play.  The natural world was my first playground. I remember honeysuckle summers and barefoot treks in the creek in small, vivid doses. The pine and damp dirt scent still saturate my childhood memory. 

 

My dreams offered a secondary landscape of exploration, closely mimicking my waking world. As a child, the changeability of the dream world felt like a co-creation between me and an ultimate and almighty force. I call on the essence of that co-creation in my painted pieces, depicting feminine figures against surreal backdrops in acts of discovery and/or surrender to the elements.

 

In my collages, I use images of the natural world to counter everyday household items, placing the viewer in an in-between space. This disorientation is meant to evoke a yearning for a place that easily escapes us. A departing memory that could have also been a dream. There is often a trickster element in my work that amplifies the uncertainty. Tricksters dwell at thresholds and ask something in exchange for access. 

 

I got terribly serious about my art when I was living in the desert among many Trickster animals and elements. In my new solitude, I returned to the door of my internal landscape. As I bargained for access, I began to use art as a second language. The symbols in my work serve as a common tongue between the unseen world and I. We are still swapping intelligence. Thank you for witnessing.