Artist Statement:

Often, I feel like I’m not all the way where I am. My body is here, but the “I” that writes this is somewhere else. I am invested in non-physical spaces, and I can’t help but feel like all the time I spend immersed in a screen detaches me from my body. Depression tends to disembody me. On the other hand, when I feel joy it often manifests in me being fully embodied: noticing every movement of my forearm and elbow, the way my foot lifts and drags on the ground, how my chest connects to my shoulders, the tension I hold in my brow.

When I paint, I’m inside my body. I was never much of an athlete- I was diagnosed with a muscle disorder pretty young and wasn’t doing a whole lot of physical activity for most of my childhood. Painting reminds me of the capacity of my body, and I’m intentional about every movement my body makes- it’s being recorded in an image that will outlast me. Curves and lines I make in each piece mimic the curves of my body, or the arches made by my shoulder, elbow, or wrist. I tend to gravitate towards canvasses that are tall and skinny, like me. I stand to paint and I’m constantly moving in a triangle between my painting, my taboret, and 10 feet back from my painting. I like to paint barefoot when I can.

The way that I construct a painting, too, becomes the construction of a body. Stretchers become a skeleton. Canvas becomes skin. An underpainting with a grid and a drawing are like a spinal cord and bones. Layers of paint, stacked like meat or thinned like a membrane- all layers are considered for their beauty and all layers are present in the final image, like tissue clamped open to reveal what’s underneath. It hurts to see the interior of a body- we aren’t supposed to see it, even if we feel our insides: air entering the lungs, muscles twitching, digestion, chest pain. What interests me is the confusion of interior and exterior: when you’re unsure of what you’re looking at, but you know it’s bodily.

The body exists in every structure, and structure is in each body. Nowhere is this more evident than gothic architecture. Vertical symmetry is core to it, as it is to us. Walking through the doors of a cathedral, I penetrate its body with surprising ease. When I look at the structure’s supports, I see a ribcage enclosing me. I notice the building’s spires as they reach upward. If God fell, he’d surely be impaled on them.

Mortality eats away at me. Impermanence is something I can’t come to terms with, and I can no longer soothe my existential dread with religion. I find it unbelievably overwhelming to be here sometimes. This is how I deal with it.