Artist Statement

This is my artist statement (more or less) that will be going up on Saturday, with my work, for the Terry McCormick Gallery Opening.


I was very young when I began my love of the arts, starting with dance and stage. After witnessing the murder of my mother when I was fourteen, I began to see painting as a means to heal emotionally and communicate with the world. Viewing art as a key vehicle for change and empowerment in myself and others, I use words and phrases to inject a sense of history and meaning into each piece. Collective experiences, stories, and memories inform everything that I do visually.

My work revolves around the subjects of love, loss, memory, self image, and domestic violence. In it, I utilize the physicality that the medium allows, and the subject matter dictates. My intention is to push the boundaries of how art can be used as a narrative for the messier aspects of life. By physically carving my marks into the paper, I can allude to a tattoo or a mar that has been embedded into the skin. It is a visual metaphor for a scarred experience, or something that one cannot easily be rid of. The inclusion of found objects and collage elements in my pieces represents an everyday experience, and that art can be seen in anything, or anyone, even the discarded.

The use of language as a visual element, as well as a literary device, is very important in my work. Much of the text is taken from pop culture references such as song lyrics, poetry, and found papers. I use the language of word and image to recreate and communicate an experience to the larger community. In my work, I want to provoke a thought process in others. I strive to create a dialogue and a resonating, shared, experience with my audience. The intention is to create a seamless partnership between paint, word, image and object, in order to produce a collection of thematically linked pieces. I see myself continuously seeking to extend the meanings of language and visual communication.