Painting Mirrors
I make paintings concerned with portraying myself and my loved ones, communicating emotional states and struggles of the soul. In these pieces, I use complex color relationships to create intimate spaces where the viewer and the subject can exist together.
To heal myself I paint my experiences, I paint the corrosion of trauma, and what piles up near an unhealed wound. I paint the many different aspects of love, my family, my life, and my experiences. These creations are an embodiment of the complexities of my mind. I want people to cry tears of empathy, pain, joy, love, hatred, and realization.
What does it mean to sit with yourself?
To cry in silence,
To let your emotions run over you
A calm sea,
A flood
How can you surrender to them,
hear what they need to tell you
In this surrender, you rise.
I paint how absurdly beautiful this world is, the feeling I get when I’m happy, the sidesplitting, nauseous happiness that I get when I feel the breeze, or when I see the sun.
When the viewer looks at my paintings, I want them to see themselves in the work. I would like the viewer to see the painting as I see it, a mirror. I want the viewer to relate to the subject, and to me. To relate and be with one another is the goal of all my work, to look at ourselves and recognize everyone within yourself. Everyone is connected, in our pain, in our happiness, and in our strength, these are the strings that stitch us together.