I use painting as a way to process my internal and external experiences. Primarily narrative driven, my work combines authentic emotion, intuitive progression, and blended genres with the goal of connectivity and understanding.
I began to interpret my dreams in paint in 2021 after spending most of my life having incredibly vivid dreams. I view dreams as a process of the subconscious communicating with the conscious in an attempt to forge a stronger self. It was a natural progression for me to go from examining the sleeper in The Sleeper Series to examining the dreams themselves. The Dream Series is ongoing, as it takes longer to plan and put together the wild dreams that I have into a concise narrative that also fits into a 2 dimensional visual plane. This Dream Series also represents a turning point in materials. After a very long time of using Acrylics, I am falling back in love with Oils.
The Sleeper Series is a tangential offshoot from the previous piece, Became. We are, at once, at our most vulnerable and our most calm when we sleep. To achieve restful sleep we need to perceive our surroundings as reasonably safe.
Became is the beginning of an exploration into the concepts of “safety, self and selfless”. “Safety” is found in our relationships with others. How we develop and maintain relationships is something that we learn first through our parents, when we are at our most vulnerable as children. Through our lives, we carry this primary relational knowledge with us. It’s as if it’s been imprinted in our bones.
The Hypoxia Series examines the relationship between humans and nature during the COVID-19 global pandemic. It is a recognition of the beauty and cruelty of nature and a reminder that we as humans are a finite part of an ongoing life/death cycle.
The Red Paintings Series is about reinvention after illness. My idea of "self" had to shift in 2019 and I had to have a rebirth. There is a shift from looking at the self as a receptacle for palliative care, to looking at it as a vessel of spiritualism and renewed identity.
The Weaver Series was created in late 2018 during an illness that lasted 3 months. I had Epstien-Barr that kicked off Hashimotos Thyroiditis. It changed my life. I was lost in a body that no longer functioned properly. The urge to use weaving and sewing was a compulsion to heal myself.
The Crumply Paper Series is a group of drawings that I did in 2015-16 after both the death of my father and moving to Long Island from Queens. These works examine the grief cycle that I was going through at the time, and not entirely conscious of. I had to mitigate my fear and anxieties; let go. I had to recognize the impermanence of my sorrow.
