ARTIST STATEMENT
My work explores social, political, and personal subjects. I combine perception and other visual sources with memory, imagination, and narrative, and I work back and forth between drawing, painting, printmaking, and writing. I find that an interdisciplinary practice sharpens my vision, illuminates unexpected facets of subjects, and generates new approaches and ideas. One of my current projects is a memoir told through visual art and writing on themes of family, alcohol use disorder, disability, and, ultimately, creativity as resilience.
I begin most projects with perceptual drawing and painting, which always spark my curiosity and imagination. As I work from perception, visual scenes fuse with and become metaphors for current issues and personal experience. Many of my observational paintings are completed through numerous sessions, while others are intentionally fast.
In the studio, my process is synthetic, particularly for my memoir series of artworks. These often start as sketches from props, limited family artifacts, and myself as a model to visualize my late parents and others in remembered scenes. I then develop images and final works through iterations, varying media, scale, emphasis, and color to explore narrative and emotional content. At a time when substance use disorder, chronic disease, and adverse childhood experiences affect a significant percentage of the U.S. population, I aim through the memoir to reduce stigma and foster resilience, connection, and joy.
I believe that all art is fundamentally communicative and exists on a continuum. Along with creative work, teaching engages me with the larger creative community.