“As a child, one has that magical capacity to move among the many eras of the earth; to see the land as an animal does; to experience the sky from the perspective of a flower or a bee; to feel the earth quiver and breathe beneath us; to know a hundred different smells of mud and listen unselfconsciously to the soughing of the trees.” – Valerie Andrews
“Something in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but of a fundamental encounter.” – Gilles Deleuze
As the daughter of a gardener and the progeny of an ancestral bloodline with a history of stewarding the earth, my sense of self developed through my connection to nature. Unmediated by technology, my childhood world was centered around play, imagination, and exploration. The days of my youth were magical as my sister and I spent our time outdoors, rain or shine, all seasons of the year. Crawling around on our knees, collecting bugs and tadpoles, scrambling in the trees and brush, we were free to explore and expand our minds in a yard filled with creativity and the gestures of love and romance of our father.
When other children were tended to by their television sets, I was encouraged to develop an imagination. As a result, I developed an appreciation for technology rather than taking its existence in my life for granted. It is these fundamental moments developing the power of my mind to create that have shaped the artist I have become, and the trajectory of work I am currently invested in making. My time in the studio is an extension of this discovery, one that transports me to the childlike wonderment where everything was new, exciting and fulfilling; where boundaries are tested.
Over the past decade my work has been largely focused on nature, the environment, the metaphysical, the cosmos, and personal history. My ancestral oral history plays a key role in the development of my ideas and processes as I reconnect with my early childhood memories spent outdoors exploring the natural world up close. At the heart of my work lies the belief that we are each born with a sense of wonder and affinity for Nature and when this connection is properly cultivated, the value and respect for Nature can mature into ecological literacy, and eventually into ecologically sustainable patterns of living.
In my studio, I am focused on creating works that retrace the embedded memories of my childhood as I seek to develop a connection with the audience that will raise their individual biospheric consciousness. This connection between the audience and the natural world is established through the creation of a moment, however brief, of reflection, silence and solitude.1 Each work is a visual poem, a love letter to the cosmos, and an homage to my ancestor’s stewardship of the earth from which I am also a part of. These works are not overt, but rather, are subtle, simple, romantic gestures. My work is my unique expression and impression of the Natural World and I hope that in providing a variety of ways in which one might find reticence, a moment to just exist, perhaps I will create a window that allows for the senses to flood the mind with new thoughts and feelings and longing. I dream of a world where we awake from our amnesic state and remember who we are at the core, animals, connected to nature, to one another, living in harmony with it. I share my connection, memories, experiences, and dreams of Nature in hopes that they spark curiosity, manifest desire, and foster growth, finding new roots in others.
From 2018 – 2023 I experienced a kind of creative Winter whereby by practice entered into a dormancy and the art of everyday living became the core function of my making. Ritual, manifestation, and intuition rose to the forefront as I began a new chapter in my creative practice. I spent time rooting and cultivating my beliefs as an artist emerging in 2024 renewed and reminded of my core self, the self that is integrated as equal parts of my past life selves, my ancestral selves, and the soul I embody in this present moment. The work I am making now is the same work I have always been tethered to in urgency, desire, and connectedness. Only now is it refined, reframed, and more deeply rooted that ever before. I am harmony. I am elevated. I am both old and new.
1 Deleuze, Gilles