Statement

When I began drawing regularly again, after years away, I created intentional circumstances for entering that creative space - certain times, certain records, certain subjects. Once I established my muscle memory, returning to the intentions and spaces became easier and easier. Like a long walk, however, I didn’t know the destination or the distance. I only knew for certain that the process of making was critical to interrogating my complicated past. 

The work was akin to immersive language learning: I was travelling in an emerging universe of my own creation, but not entirely understanding it. Over time, I saw patterns. Symbols appeared from my garden and my personal history. There were flowers for memories and resilience, the river for change, and my house as myself, among others. These were not unlike hieroglyphics, layered with meaning that I had to translate.

I slowly built a visual vocabulary with pen, pencil, thread, watercolor, x-actos, and paper, moving beyond basics to full expression. The evolving world and language grew into a safe place to explore the hurt, the hope, the change, the turmoil, and the beauty of a difficult personal history.

One of my responsibilities as an artist is to bring beauty into the world. Finding the sublime in pain is an act of healing and an active resistance - a way to rewrite a complex past that has shaped, but will not define, me. And now that I inhabit these newly created places, not merely exist in them, I invite others to explore with me, to hear and see and find what they need. Drawing new maps is a way to understand where we’ve been so that we can ask, “Where do we go now?”

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