Artist Statement

 

          Upon beginning a new piece of work, I become obsessed with the idea of what it will look like once it is completed. The building of the figure or the graphic drawings are intricate and hard to push through, but the idea of what it will look like once it is finished pushes me through the challenges. As an artist I create pieces as sort of a therapeutic process. I become so caught up in the creative experience that any other sort of thoughts I was having outside of my work, become nonexistent. The different forms of art that I complete in diverse mediums all serve a purpose in what I am trying to work through and convey.

 

          Despite sharing formal concerns, the two bodies of work satisfy different needs. When it comes to my figurative work, I have developed an interest in dynamic foreshortening and dramatic lighting. Both of these techniques give a strange yet beautiful approach to the figure. Most people expect to see models in everyday, simple poses, but I find the beauty in the figure with how the body folds, the strange angles people sometimes find themselves in, and the look of the body as a compact structure. With the figure, I tend to use pastels, but not colors you would usually see in the figure. Unusual colors such as hues of green, blue, or red are used to try and express an emotion as well as communicating to the viewer the honest experience of what I had seen.

 

          Aside from my figurative work, I have started a more graphic drawing series, which is not as concerned with traditional illusionism but pattern and intricate line. I began doing this series as simple drawings, but then found myself consumed by them and how elaborate they could be. With these drawings, I am trying to communicate to the viewer what I am experiencing internally, in my imagination. The elaborate, obscure details that I put into the drawings are almost like the thoughts that go running through our minds.

 

          I hope it is clear that formal structure is an important part of my work, but I also hope that viewers are able to see how it is therapeutic for me. Being able to work on pieces concurrently, gives me the ability to express myself in that exact moment, whether it is forming the body or creating complex designs. Envisioning the final product is always the exciting part, it is the pushing through the details and building that is the hard part.