The Story behind the work.
This series is a culmination of years of storytelling and creating. Each painting, drawing or sculpture is an attempt at communicating the unseen emotional experience and creating a visual representation of it.
This very personal experience of being alive and the journey of working through trauma is something I continue to explore. My memory of childhood is one of extreme loneliness, emotional invalidation, fatigue and isolation. Until I discovered therapy most of my adult life was spent that way.
My women may appear fragile but underneath is a strong will to not only survive but thrive. They exist in the woods, the rivers, and the mountains where they can explore and safely work through their own internal world. The only place for me as a child where I felt comfortable was isolated from others and this is reflected in my paintings. Nature has always been the place where I felt I could let my guard down and be myself. I would create sculptures from rocks or leaves, befriend bugs, sketch on the dirt, anything to dissociate from my own internal experience which was too overwhelming at the time. This anxiety and curiosity is what lead me to paint, draw, and create.
The journey to understand why I felt so estranged from the world lead to a creation of my own world. It’s the lifeblood of my work and each piece is a story in itself, a reflection of a moment in time or a feeling I have felt. I think about my artistic and emotional journey as continuing to ascend mountains and untouched internal landscapes. Although often extremely bleak, this process of growth is dually life-affirming.