Artist Statement:

My art practice is an exploration of the relationship between the human psyche and the phenomenology of ‘place’.  Through an examination of my physical surroundings, both indoors and outdoors, I am better able to make sense of my own internal landscape. 

Our homes and are our first universes. They are how we come to understand comfort and discomfort, familiarity and unfamiliarity- as well as the very nature of what it means to ‘be’. “I am here, and I exist”. The environments we come from, shape the very nature of who we are, how we construct thoughts, and how we take action (or at times, remain in stasis).  No human is without this experience.  To be somewhere and to be from somewhere, is what it means to be. 

This subject matter, while it is completely universal, is what has helped me better understand my own personhood, experiences and memories, and gives me insight to how I have come to be in the world, how I want to continue to be, and how I want to grow and transform. The specific imagery I return to in my work, is a product of growing up in an urban setting, constantly moving from apartment to apartment, bringing certain precious objects along the way, and each time in turn leaving some behind.  I grew up going to visit the farms that my parents grew up on, which was a landscape that terrified me, as it was deeply unfamiliar to a child that grew up in the city. My earliest memories are of standing in 8 foot weeds, on my grandfathers 500 acre Iowa farm, terrified of getting lost in what felt like an endless void, or getting eaten by the hundreds of cicadas that would drone out a call for help.  I was both terrified and mesmerized by this landscape when I was a kid. It was not what was directly familiar to me- but it was my families landscape, and the very things that terrified me about it, were deeply comforting to them.  As a grew up, learning that i have a familial predisposition for severe mental health imparities, the 8 foot weeds made more sense. My grandfather was not able to take care of the farm, let alone himself. I was better able to understand this when as a young adolescent, I was deeply struggling to take care of myself as well. Understanding that environment has helped me better understand myself and my family.  I have continued to understand myself through my relationship with the spaces i inhabit, I travel through, I find comfort and familiarity, curiosity and fear. The landscape I sit in, often mirrors the landscape of my subconscious. Through exploring these spaces I am better able to make sense of the fields of weeds, gardens and rooms filled with precious objects- that constitute my psyche.

My medium is primarily painting and drawing.  I specifically choose to be connected to the lineage of painting because of its impact on human beings since we were living in caves. Cave paintings where created in the dark, sometimes hundreds of years apart from each other, as a signal to the next group of people passing through or inhabiting as a way to communicate their existence and their experiences. It was a signal to them that they are not alone.  Painting and drawing, for me personally is the most automatic and quickest way I am able to connect my psyche and my personhood with the psychical world. Oil painting and the process of many layers of paint and then thinner to remove me from the first layer, helps me express my removal from my own memories and experiences and express my relationship with them now. They are very much apart of me, but are not as clear as the first time I experienced them. Drawing enables me to quickly express what I’m experiencing or processing, while painting is a tool I use to work through the murkier parts of my psyche. These two mediums have allowed me to process and continue to remain connected to our ancestors in the caves, as well as my earliest self scribbling with crayons trying to draw what I saw in our Chicago apartments.  As my art practice continues to develop for the remainder of my life, I will always return to these two as a fundamental structures as they allowed me to remain connected to the physical landscape I sit in and the terrain of my subconscious.