Artist Statement

My Practice is a constant battle between painting, sculpture, and extensional thoughts. I concern myself with self-control, regression, mortality, and self-value, within this I find myself questioning the purpose of existence frequently during the creative process. Being hyper aware of my mortality is my reason to make art, I feel that perhaps after death my artwork will live beyond me and my existence is experienced by people I won’t meet and in places I won’t visit.

I choose body part parts that I find to be the most intimate (eyes, hands, mouth, teeth, and head) to feature in my work. These body parts hold a grotesque nature to them when taken out of context; I feel that they remind me of what I value the most about my body, what I couldn’t live without or what would pain me the most emotionally if damaged. Not only do I pin my entire life’s value onto my work I put my most valuable body parts in it.

My paintings feel as if they are struggled sculpture, and my sculptures feel as if they need a function. These two conclusions fuel my desire for destruction and the devaluing of my work in the creative process. Using soft sculpture to paint means I can fully immerse myself in play. The regression I experience using them allows me to give into my impulses and desires, commit anti-social acts, and experience genuine emotion towards the painting process. Treating the canvas as an object and giving a sculpture purpose removes all value to the two objects during the process, it gives me the illusion of freedom to do as I please with them. Once I am done playing, the paintings retire as art and the art objects retire as sculpture. Their value to me is resorted when they become art.