Artist Statement
It’s through my creativity that I know this world. It’s through community that I know myself.
In all that I do, across all media, creating and relating is at the center. Making art is the intelligence in my body in relationship with the world around me. What I create, what we all create, is suspended in a web of deep time and infinite space. Through 5 mass extinctions, here we are—seemingly insignificant creatures existing for a whisper of time, yet full of power and capable of creating incredible things.
My work is the echo of my Ancestors, of their hopes and dreams; it's my prayers for my child and the future world they'll inhabit.
I work with the Earth to remember who I am, and who I can be.
I collect minerals to make paints. As I do so, I'm in constant communication with my place in the cosmos. Harvesting ochre (iron rich rock) is gathering the blood of the Earth. It's what remains of what was—from a time long before humans. It's the power of the central force of our planet making itself known on the surface. It's our every Ancestor, in every kingdom. It's the physical embodiment of, “nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed."
I work with mineral and soil pigments to relate to the past, and to remember the lasting power of the marks I make.
As I forage for plants for dyes and inks, I face the delicate nature of life. I touch time in the seasonality of the flowers and leaves, the gulls and seeds. I widen my gaze to find life where there seems to be only death and decay. I plant seeds in my dye garden to grow color as a belief that a more beautiful future is possible and within reach.
I work with plant pigments to witness the fragility of life, and to remember the fleeting nature of my own.
The paradox of these two material sources holds the complexity of what I understand to be true about life. It's here at the center, where two opposing realities meet, that I perceive the most fundamental truths. Life is not 'this or that', it's not even 'this and that.' It's the resistance at the center of two antagonistic coexisting realities. It's the ever present friction between concurrent antithetical experiences.
Life doesn't wrap itself up in a tidy bow. It is both pain and pleasure, grief and joy, beauty and repulsion.
Everything I create carries this energetic signature.
In any medium I touch, I bring the perspective of searching for truth through paradox.
If art is to reflect life, then that, in and of itself, is my declaration.
All that I make will change with the perspective and experiences you bring. It will change, even as it exists in a static state, because it's a relationship between you, and me, and the worlds we embody. It will change because it reflects life, and that is what life does.
My work is made to change under your gaze.
And perhaps, you'll be changed too.