ARTIST STATEMENT

My paintings are born from the weight of memories and reflection. Feelings of joy, loss, change, and longing linger in the corners of my mind, and they often feel too heavy to hold and impossible to speak about. When I paint, I am able to let go of those emotions and meditate on my past, present, and future. I confront the difficult memories in my life by making narrative paintings of female figures immersed in dreamlike landscapes. My figures are sometimes joined by other people or animals, but each figure is reckoning with her own place in her vivid world alone.

The women in my paintings are not traditional self-portraits. Rather, they serve as vessels of memory. I put pieces of myself and people that I love – my family and friends – in these paintings, even if the figure’s features are indiscernible. The scene becomes a reflection on the remnants of people and events in my life. In this way, I can directly confront powerful feelings such as guilt, grief, and loss, without solidifying them to one person or event. The ambiguity also allows the viewer to imagine themselves within the scene and find their own stories reflected in my work.

My process is both physical and mental, and it mirrors the properties of how memory is layered and compounded over time. I begin each painting with dynamic marks, building up, scraping back, and reshaping different elements until a composition resonates with me. My saturated palette reflects the intensity of my longing for the people and places of my past, but also of the vibrancy of the people and places I hold close presently. The buildup of expressive marks and saturated colors constructs a new, invented world rather than a depiction of real life. These environments are created through the weaving of remembrance, love, and loss, while also bursting with life from the value of my own self-reflection.