Artist Statement

Artwork has a beautiful way of expressing deeply personal and complicated emotions, In many ways it moves beyond the barriers of language. I find this profoundly beautiful, and it’s what drew me to becoming an artist. I use art to tell my story and address topics that can be difficult to talk about. Grief, madness, and loss of control are major themes in my work. I use emotion to guide my hand when creating art and memories to inspire those movements. I am drawn to thick, highly pigmented and gestural movements in my paintings because they force me to let go of control. In sculpture, I form the clay in an expressive manner but allow the clay to fold and collapse naturally. For me, art is about letting go of control and releasing my need to keep my emotions locked away where they can’t affect me. So much of my life has been a spiral of events that I had no control of. I value the therapeutic aspects of art because I can control the way paint spreads across a canvas or I can let go. I feel peace from the way that paint bleeds into the fine tooth of a sheet of watercolor paper and fills each pocket with bright and brilliant color. Sometimes my mind feels like it’s filled with overwhelming static, but I find silence in artmaking. In all of my work I have a single intention: to express the moments of my life that shaped who I am, no matter how beautiful or violent they are. My art is a way for others to see who I am, unfiltered and beyond the barriers of language.