We come across stories regularly that make us laugh or cry, but some tie a string around our hearts and pull out familiar memories. My artworks tell those stories and by using abstraction to express balanced metaphors of pain and joy, the layers manifest traces of us and how family and other lived conditions frame our responses to what we encounter. These shared instances become woven into our lives and are communicated in my work’s visually tactile experience through assembly choices and the resulting surface conditions. Abstraction leaves a space for viewers to create their own interpretations, while my intended symbols of pain and joy exist as a reminder to hold onto hope and search for the possibility of repair.

Additive and subtractive marks trace gestures of movement, symbols of strength, and contradictions of the tenuous to reference specific occurrences which have yielded different results. Visceral moments of life are located within the thick, pudding-like substances applied randomly between faint washes. On slab surfaces strain is implied by a tenuous quality of articulation points. When the support is more flexible, tension forms between tightly outstretched corners.

Many materials are rescued items or remnants from earlier works. The repurposed elements force me to resolve, and often provide surprising results. In this way, each artwork asserts itself, as much as it is guided by my hand, mimicking the pulse of a society in constant flux. Allowing this exchange of choices between myself and the work, forces an indefinite state of progress which leaves the ultimate results unknown until culmination.