As an artist I am interested in stories, both linear and non-linear, and in how narrative provides a vessel that shapes our identity.

 

Communication of these narratives has been a new experience for me because, as a child, I was raised in an isolated community with no exposure to mass media and public education. As a result, I don’t take culture and the stories it tells for granted. In fact, I come at it with a more detached, critical viewpoint – as an outsider trying to find her way in. I investigate the ways that culture influences one’s identity as well as how it contributes to the building and erasing of memories.

 

Formally, I interpret these ideas into color and movement on canvas. The imagery in my work, aside from the figurative, may be thought of as the props and accessories of cultural stories. The pieces convey the brittleness of the structure that identity is built upon while celebrating the complexity of humanity. The question becomes: to what extent do the various accessories of identity — man, woman, race, social standing, etc. — empower us and to what extent do they bind? What is the relationship between remembering and forgetting as it relates to the individual? Memories are buried and eroded, replaced by vibrant and distinct new narratives, a constant anthem of struggle. The contemporary and past blend, layer upon layer, vying for importance. My work focuses on this cyclical nature of the stories we tell ourselves about race, gender, and our respective places in history.

 

My process involves original photographic reference material that I abstract through drawing and then paint onto canvas, combining characters, faces, and bodies into "free association" graphical situations. Portraits that are interior and exterior interact like a Mobius strip. Landscapes transition into thought-scapes and pure graphic form.