Repeating and Entangled Forms

There is a feeling I sometimes get, usually while outside. It is a sensation of expansion, unwinding, reframing, unmaking. It brings an acknowledgement of fluidity to both physical form and emotional state. The sounds of the plants moving in the wind, birds calling, squirrels scurrying, inviting awareness to spread out in all directions. Senses questing beyond the reaches of the physical body, even while the body is the vehicle for experience. This body of work aims to explore vulnerability, transformation, and connection, while exploring tensions between the artificial and the natural. I encourage viewers to consider their own body, the significance of touch, and their relationship to both cultural expectations and natural ecosystems.

Stories of myth and fantasy have long influenced my work. I invent visual narratives to explore how one’s body can more intimately relate to the greater living world. Transitions and transformations are explored across media, with repeating structures found in the figures and surrounding plants, or in the sunlight that casts projections of the environment onto a body. Either using paint, charcoal, or sculptural materials, I explore the suggestion of physical and energetic change. Light cast through leafy branches outdoors and through the replicated foliage of lace curtains can dance and play on surfaces in much the same way.

Throughout art history and within contemporary media, representations of nude or semi-nude women have often been used to perpetuate ideas of possession and objectification. In advertising, the body is talked about and framed in terms of desirability, promoting self-judgment and self-sexualization. I am interested in interrogating these cultural ideas and the way they tend to constrict our ability to regard the body as an organic system that acts as our point of connection to the world around us. The same practices and beliefs that distort relationships we have with our bodies contribute to the overproduction of objects that become waste and pollution, and the mistreatment of natural environments, threatening the health of the planet we all call home.

Tensions between cultural expectations and the needs of natural ecosystems, and between the version of ourselves we perform in society versus our sense of self while alone, is significant. The separation between ourselves and the world around us is narrower than I think we often perceive. Our physical and social environments transform us, but we in turn can shape our environments. Our bodies and the information they process allow us to experience vulnerability, transformation, and connection with the world. I aim to recenter my relationship to my own body and the environment, setting aside cultural expectations in favor of direct, vulnerable encounters with the land that nourishes the lives of humans and ecosystems alike.