Artist Statement (2025)
My interpretation of body language. Another person in observation and relativity. The types of relationships we build in our lifetimes: long-term, short-term, romantic, platonic, parasitic, and internal. I take these relationships and I build upon them moments of visual, semantic translation for viewer dissection influenced by our current political and social climate.
How I move through the world, my observations and personal relationships color how I play with the figures in my work. They are collages of my mundane personal histories with romanticized layers. I overlay personal relationships onto photoshopped strangers and beg them to complete a neverending cycle of formed relationships. I consider distance, tension, connection, sound, barriers, etc. and exaggerate or singularly focus on how one element can transform a dialogue.
My work is queer and exposed. I create tension both technically and linguistically, with the edge and with the space. I work within several dichotomies to understand misinterpretation, and political and social cause and effect. The effect of society present in our psyches and our quiet digestion of external information processed internally. My work is not loud and never will be, but quietly uncomfortable in its execution. How we view each other and how we view ourselves in intimate spaces, physical and mental.
Nude versus naked is the grand visual dichotomy that serves as the base of thought in my conceptual exploration. Walking the line of how the public has come to accept certain types of exposure and where. Considering how the digital space has evolved our interaction with the exposed body and how that has shifted the narrative of figurative art. My soft and hazy material approach lends itself well to the line of thought of both inviting intimacy and questioning nakedness.
Using several layers of acrylic paint, watercolor, and colored pencil, I create quiet depth through color, texture, and layers of material. I approach my work with prism-like sensibilities and understanding. The process is a consistent reminder that the figure is a landscape. Small ecosystems with shadows, mountains, scars, evidence of existence. The structure of the body is a cohabitant to an isolated experience. The ethereal nature of a person is transcribed by the ethereal nature of material. Synthesized, concept and medium, they form the visual exposition of human nature.
