Artist Statement
I’m interested in the things we carry—our experiences, identities, and traumas—and specifically how we persist in spite of these visible and invisible burdens. I am inspired by human—in particular woman’s—resilience and adaptability. My masked female portraits, lifeless feathered creatures, and weighted-down insects depict this everyday defiance.
Each of us carries parts of ourself that we cannot easily share with the outside world, or even reach within ourself. Each of us carries traumas from our past and of our present. My work aims at transforming these pivotal and difficult stories —with vibrantly-hued oil, watercolor, and collage—into magical narratives of personal evolution. By abstracting hyper-naturalistic portraits using collage, symbolism, and pattern, I ask people to really look at my subjects and celebrate their progress. I think we all crave this.
Sharing great women is also important to my work. I hope that by presenting the powerful women I have the pleasure to meet through the PERSISTERS series, new communities and ideas will be sparked and women will all the more celebrate each other.
Ultimately, my practice is about hope, resolve, and joy in the face of life’s obstacles. My portraits are vivid, multi-layered, fanciful, and unconventional; and they revel in the resilience required of each of us in order to persist.