Artist Statement: My work often explores a visual dichotomy between red and blue. I play with these colors a lot because I feel they provoke opposite, yet essential, emotional states. The construction of my work seems to mirror my tendency to ruminate. I start with one line or color or form, and from there I experiment. It grows and changes, and I play with the idea and let it shift. With my work, I need to have the ability to change things quickly or I feel I won't express my core idea. Because of this I like working with materials -- like acrylic, paper collage and words -- that I can easily edit or transform. I never make sketches or plan extensively what I am going to make. Sometimes, when making art, I have a guiding word or form in mind as I create. Recently, these words and forms have been associated with the natural world -- with animals, plants, and parts of the body that hold specific emotional significance.
Much of my art plays with conflict between inward and outward facing identities. I have observed a lot of isolation and loneliness amongst people of my generation, especially women. There is a lack of intimacy in young people's relationships because it is seen as too risky. This is especially salient for millennials, given our risk-averse tendencies. At the same time, there is a lot of emphasis on 'authenticity' and being your 'authentic' self. In order to get attention for things in an ever media-populated world, people sometimes feel that they need to be more and more outlandish with these 'authentic' selves. Some of what I'm playing at with my collage series is this tendency toward vibrancy and shocking emotional displays that in reality obscure inner struggles. My work is in a productive tension with social media, which in my opinion indulges autobiographical impulses that subvert artistic forms, creating inaccurate, bifurcated or purposefully misleading representations of the self. In contrast, I value longer meditations on identity that produce more singular reflections of the self, even if authenticity for the self is, in fact, impossible or always already multiple.
In the content of my work, I am inspired by writers and artists like Ta-Nehisi Coates, bell hooks, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Romaine Brooks, Yaa Gyasi and Frida Kahlo who use stories of resilience to define their identities and create more understanding about their races, nationalities, religions, disabilities, genders, sexualities or generations. Likewise, I supplement my artistic practice with research in academic disciplines such as postcolonial studies, feminist theory, cultural studies, disability studies and sociology that underpin the cultural turn in the social sciences. I am equally fascinated by the work of Alain de Botton, Esther Perel, Elaine Aron, and Arthur Aron on love, sensitivity, connection, intimacy, and relationships. Visually, I am very inspired by artists whose work mixes real and surreal elements and by the art of the Abstract Expressionist and Dada movements.