About me
Artist Statement
I love paradoxes. I am intrigued by vulnerability, an experience both incredibly rewarding and utterly terrifying.
It is ironically the very thing that exposes us to danger but allows us to enjoy the warmth of connection. Without it, we may never be hurt, but we may also never be loved. This is a paradox, something that cancels itself out, some- thing that isn't black and white. I create work to try to understand these shades of gray. When I approach the idea of a piece, I do thorough research into my own psyche in order to understand my perception of the concept completely.Whether I'm making work about childhood, love, sex, vulnerability, or memory, I begin by identifying the issue.
Often, I'm trying to find the balance between two opposing ideas: safety and vulnerability, control and flow, love and resentment, reality and fantasy, or memory and presence; it is not so much that these pairs are paradoxical, but the paradox that exists when something is both, simultaneously. I often rely on the surreal to present these issues. This happens in many ways, such as blending two and three- dimensional space, or painting an image that could never exist in real life; this emphasizes the acceptance of the paradox, the gray. This is the core of my work: not only identifying the issue, but accepting the conflicting truths as equal. True understanding is rarely a simple answer, but rather a sequence of perspectives.